Global real estate investment management firm Heitman recently announced the acquisition of a portfolio of Baylor-anchored properties in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Heitman made the purchase in a joint venture with New York-based investment firm Seavest Healthcare Properties.

The portfolio encompasses six micro-hospital locations that are strategically located throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth region near population centers that have good access to major transportation modes serving the larger area.

Built between 2014 and 2018, all six locations are affiliated with the Baylor Scott & White Health System — the largest hospital system in the metroplex. The portfolio encompasses approximately 190,000 square feet of healthcare-dedicated Dallas office space and was 100% leased at the time of sale.

“We are pleased to partner with Seavest, an established and high-quality medical office building [MOB] operator, to acquire this best-in-class micro-hospital portfolio on behalf of our global investment strategy and to work with Texas’ largest healthcare provider,” said Gordon Black, senior managing director and global portfolio manager at Heitman. “Our global strategy invests across property types in the North American, European and Asia-Pacific regions. The addition of the Baylor micro-hospital MOB portfolio provides our global portfolio strong risk diversification from both a regional and sector perspective as we continue to balance our portfolios to match today’s operating environment and continued uncertainty in the markets.”

Medical office property has certainly proven to be a strong asset in times of market uncertainty. In fact, our most recent report on the last decade of medical office building construction activity found that the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex ranked third in the country for amount of medical office space added during that time. Specifically, developers here completed roughly 4.6 million square feet between 2012 and 2021, which marked a 10-year growth of 16% and brought MOB inventory up to a total of 33 million square feet.

Data showed that one other Texas market also ranked among the top echelon in this respect: Houston was the second-largest market in the country — but not by much. According to the report, medical office space in Houston totaled 33.2 million square feet in August of this year.

At a comfortable distance ahead, Los Angeles led the way in terms of medical office assets, with more than 41 million square feet across more than 1,000 medical office buildings.