At a time when large healthcare real estate (HRE) portfolios with strong hospital affiliations are supposedly hard to find, along comes an offering that has quickly garnered plenty of interest from a wide range of investors.

The Healthcare Capital Markets group of JLL (NYSE: JLL) is marketing the portfolio and representing seller Harrison Street Real Estate Capital, which owns the properties in its four-year-old, third opportunistic fund.

As of recent weeks, the portfolio was the biggest HRE offering to date in 2014, as it comprises seven medical office buildings (MOBs), four of which are multi-tenant facilities and three of which are single-tenant buildings, and five hospitals– three inpatient rehabilitation hospitals (IRHs) and two surgical acute-care hospitals.

The buildings in the 2014 Harrison Street Multi-State Healthcare Portfolio, as it is called, are located in Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Nevada and Indiana. With a total square footage of 655,661, the portfolio is 99.6 percent occupied.

Mindy Berman, managing director with JLL, says the portfolio is attractive to experienced and unexperienced HRE owners alike.

“These are nice buildings, new construction, as the average age is six years, with one building having been totally gutted and remodeled,” notes Berman. “And they are all fee-simple acquisitions, except one building, and are all free and clear of debt.”

She adds that there is “very little tenant rollover” in coming years, as the average weighted remaining lease term is nine years, with less than 10 percent of the leases expiring in the next five years.

Harrison Street's Brian Mutchler, a senior VP and co-head of asset management, says the offering is in keeping with the company's strategy of acquiring and/or developing assets, often one at a time, stabilizing them and then packaging them as portfolios.

“Given the value we created by leasing up the various multi-tenant buildings in the portfolio and successfully delivering and stabilizing the development assets, it is the right time for us to sell so that we can take full advantage of the long-term duration of the leases in place to maximize value for a next buyer,” says Mutchler.

Because hospital facilities, such as rehabilitation hospitals, long-term acute-care hospitals (LTACHs) and surgical facilities are garnering strong returns – in some cases stronger than MOBs – Berman notes that having those facilities in the portfolio could provide a strong return for the eventual buyer.

She notes that post-acute care facilities have become integral in the healthcare delivery model under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

About 74 percent of the space is leased directly by health systems or hospital operators. They are: Nashville, TN-based HCA; Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. (NYSE: THC); HealthSouth Corp. (NYSE: HLS); Livonia, MI-based CHE Trinity Health; St. Louis-based Mercy Health; Franklin, TN.-based Community Health Systems (NYSE: CYH).

According to Mutchler, Harrison Street plans to be a “very active” buyer of MOBS and other post-acute facilities for its investors in 2014 and beyond. The company's various funds own 52 healthcare facilitieswith more than 3.6 million square feet.