Inspired Healthcare Capital Wins $713M Sale Approval, Seeks DIP Boost to $100M
Inspired Healthcare Capital has court approval to sell nearly all of its senior-living portfolio, after the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas entered 11 separate sale orders last week covering roughly 30 communities for a combined $713.5 million. The orders, signed by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mark X. Mullin within about 35 minutes of each other that morning, close out a sale hearing that had stretched across three calendar dates – opening Sept. 22, resuming Sept. 29, and continuing again Oct. 5 – without a ruling at any of them.
The total is slightly lower than the roughly $717 million figure AltsWire reported in September, which came from the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors’ own tally of the auction’s winning bids before the sale hearing began.
When the hearing opened in September, debtors’ counsel told the court the sale covered about 30 communities going to roughly 10 buyers, citing figures that included a roughly $197 million purchase by Welltower OP and a roughly $147 million deal tied to HPI, alongside smaller transactions. Those numbers track the portfolio AltsWire has followed since the case’s stalking-horse phase, when buyers including Inspired Florida Acquisitions, Sonida Acquisition, and others locked in $341.7 million across 18 communities months before the auction concluded, and before the creditors committee fought bid protections tied to a separate $143.5 million deal with National Healthcare Properties.
Most of the objections that dragged the hearing out over three sessions are now resolved. Four lenders – Provident Bank, Pinnacle Bank, UMB Bank, and the HPI Fairmount/Delray Lender entities – had all objected to how the proposed sale orders handled their collateral, arguing the paperwork didn’t reflect terms they say were already agreed to informally. Provident’s, Pinnacle’s, and UMB’s disputes were resolved through sealed stipulations entered Oct. 20.
HPI’s was not. Its objection, covering the sale of communities in Grapevine, Texas, and Delray Beach, Florida, remains open, and the sale orders for those two properties still contain language requiring the debtors to escrow proceeds not otherwise disbursed to HPI pending a further stipulation. That dispute did not hold up the sales themselves: both the Grapevine and Delray Beach orders were entered along with everyone else’s on Oct. 13. But the open objection means the final word on how much HPI actually collects is still pending.
The debtors separately resolved, at least for now, a longstanding fight over whether parts of the case should go to mediation. A bankruptcy court order entered in mid-October appointed retired federal judge Nancy F. Atlas as mediator, tied to a motion the debtors had filed back in August. The appointment is narrower than that original request, though: it covers claims between the debtors and a group of broker-dealers and registered investment advisers, plus whatever else the parties voluntarily agree to send to mediation, and three of the motion’s original objectors – the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors’ counterpart on secured debt, Pinnacle Bank, and the U.S. Trustee’s office – aren’t signed onto this version of it.
Even with the asset sale approved, the case isn’t done needing cash. The debtors have asked the court for a third increase to their debtor-in-possession financing, seeking an additional $52,845,000 on top of the $45 million and $2,155,000 already approved, a jump that would bring the total facility to $100 million nine months into a case that has now won approval to sell most of its communities. The motion warns that without the additional funding, “the Debtors would be forced to begin shutting down communities almost immediately.” A hearing on the request is set for Nov. 17.
The sale approval leaves two threads still open in the case: HPI’s unresolved proceeds dispute, and a continuing investigation into former chief executive officer Luke Lee’s personal finances that AltsWire reported on in August, a matter unrelated to the asset sale, now headed toward its own resolution on a separate track.
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