Colliers Taps Mark Silver for Seniors Practice

SEATTLE-Colliers International has formed a national Seniors Housing Practice Group and has hired Mark Silver, formerly a managing director and co-head of the National Seniors Housing Group at Jones Lang LaSalle, as national director to lead the formation and management of the new Colliers group. Singer, based in New York City, tells GlobeSt.com that Colliers will be expanding the new group throughout the country, including new hires as it staffs up the group.

“The seniors housing market is very untapped, at least for commercial real estate firms," Silver says. The Colliers Seniors Housing Practice Group will provide integrated services of brokerage, capital markets and strategic planning to owners and investors across all sectors of senior housing and healthcare, including independent living facilities, assisted living facilities, nursing homes, dementia facilities, continuing care retirement communities, surgical centers, medical office buildings and hospitals.

Silver says that one of the services most needed by owners and investors of seniors housing is valuation. Colliers already has one of the strongest healthcare property valuation groups in the country, he points out, but the company “hasn't been involved in a formal, structured way with seniors housing.”

Silver’s job is to create that structure, and he will be working very closely with the healthcare valuation group as he forms the National Seniors Housing Group, he says. “Owners, regardless of whether we are in good markets or bad markets, always need valuation services,” he adds.

Silver, whose resume includes a post as senior director of the Seniors Housing Group at Cushman & Wakefield, is an 18-year industry veteran who has represented a wide variety of healthcare and seniors housing clients throughout the US. His most recent assignments include the sale of a skilled nursing and assisted living facilities in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut and medical office buildings in New York and Texas. He has also provided development consulting and/or financing services for projects in Connecticut, Florida and Long Island.

Silver tells GlobeSt.com that despite the general decline in values of properties across the commercial real estate spectrum, many seniors housing facilities are still doing wellthey are cash-flowing and producing NOI, so that seniors housing owners may not be compelled to sell as owners of some classes of real estate are. Although development has slowed with the economy, Silvers points out that demographic trends clearly point to the need for new development: The proportion of the US population age 65 and over is projected to increase from 12.4% in 2000 to more than 19.6% by 2030 as Baby-Boomers reach 65. “As financing improves, and as the Boomers become of age, which is right around the corner, we will see new development,” he says.

The hiring of Silver and the formation of the National Seniors Housing Group are part of the continuing expansion of Colliers service lines nationally as the company emphasizes “client-focused” and “solution-oriented” services, according to Dylan Taylor, CEO of Colliers International in the US. Mark Jaccom, CEO of the Tri-State region for Colliers, says that having Silver operate out of the New York office will help to expand the company’s service lines and local market share there as well. In addition to creating a national presence in the seniors housing market, “The addition of Mark and our recently launched Tri-State Life Science Practice Group furthers our momentum in New York,” Jaccom says.