At Senior Care Realty, we are more than just a brokerage firm that helps in the buying and selling of senior care real estate. We also take pride in our role as a business incubator. "Sometimes we can help make a sale happen by buying it ourselves and teaming up with others interested in running the business," says SCR president and CEO Mike Collins.
That's just what happened in late summer 2009 at an 8-bed assisted living facility on Madison's west side that is now named Hannah's House. Owners and operators of the business are the husband and wife team of Jennifer and James Eklof. "Owning a business such as this had been in my heart for more than a decade," says Jennifer, a licensed practical nurse.
With their combined experiences in health care and business management, James and Jennifer felt that assisted living could be done well. To them, that means a place that looks and feels like home rather than just a facility where others reside.
Such is the attitude that the Eklof's have taken at Hannah's House, and it's the kind of approach to assisted living that SCR seeks in a business partner. "The biggest thing they have is the right attitude. We are on the same page as to why you are in the assisted living business. They want to help take care of people the right way, and they want to have the freedom of having their own business," Collins explains. "Taking care of residents is the highest priority, and that's what we seek in an operator," he says.
Completing the transaction with the Eklof's did not happen overnight. In fact, they had considered another facility about three years earlier and that deal fell through. Jennifer says she gave up the dream a little bit after that experience, worked in home health care and began an adult family home in their own home. "Out of the blue, three years later I got an email from Mike and he asked, 'What's going on in your life now?' He had an opportunity and thought of us," she recalls.
SCR eventually purchased the property and today the company leases it back to the Eklof's. Such an approach made it easy for them to get into the business and removed the challenges of obtaining financing in a tight economy. "Mike and Daren took us under their wing and believed and trusted in us to make this happen. We could not have succeeded without them," she says.
For more information on leasing, contact Collins via email:
mike@seniorcarerealty.com.
