DENVER-According to a recent US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, NexCore Development LLC has agreed to acquire the 13 buildings being offered for sale by Jones Lang LaSalle Income Property Trust Inc. as part of the so-called Dignity Health Medical Office Building Portfolio. The transaction is scheduled to close during the fourth quarter.

Neither buyer nor seller has commented publicly. But in the Sept. 4 Form 8-K filing, JLL revealed that an agreement was struck Aug. 30 and that Denver-based NexCore has agreed to pay $114 million for the portfolio of healthcare real estate assets. The SEC filing also states that Chicago-based JLL will book a $14 million net gain on the sale.

The Dignity Health MOB Portfolio totals 657,811 rentable square feet, including eight buildings in California and five in Arizona, according to CBRE Group Inc., which marketed the properties for JLL. All the California MOBs and two of the Arizona assets are on hospital campuses, while the other three Arizona properties are in off-campus locations.

San Francisco-based Dignity Health, formerly Catholic Healthcare West, occupied about 33% of the space at the time of the offering, according to marketing materials for the portfolio. CBRE said total occupancy was 79% percent, providing plenty of potential upside, including the distinct possibility of expanded leasing by Dignity Health, the nation's fifth largest health system.

For example, the firm says Dignity Health is interested in leasing about 22,000 square feet in one of the buildings, Mercy North Medical Office Building in Bakersfield, CA. The 38,621 square-foot building, which is on the campus of Dignity's Mercy Southwest Hospital, was 42.9% leased at the time of the offering. Should Dignity take all of the space in which it has shown interest, the building would be nearly 100% occupied, CBRE notes.

The largest asset in the Dignity Health portfolio is the nine-story, 168,511 square-foot McAuley Medical Center at 500 W. Thomas Rd. in Phoenix, which is on the campus of Dignity's 673-bed St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center. Another sizable building is the seven-story, 67,810 square-foot Northridge I Medical Office Building at 18350 Roscoe Blvd. in Northridge, CA, which is connected by a pair of skybridges to Dignity's 371-bed Northridge Hospital Medical Center. But most of the buildings in the portfolio are in the 30,000- to 49,000-square-foot range.

Murray W. Wolf is the Publisher and Founding Editor of Healthcare Real Estate Insights™, the nation's first and only publication totally dedicated to covering news and trends in healthcare real estate development, financing and investment. For more information, please visit www.HREInsights.com.