Scott Peters, chairman, CEO and president of Healthcare Trust of America, Inc. (NYSE: HTA), joined Nareit for a video interview at REITworld 2017.
Healthcare Trust invests in medical office buildings (MOB) on health system campuses, in core community locations or near university medical centers.
Earlier this year, the REIT purchased the MOB portfolio of Duke Realty Corp. (NYSE: DRE) for $2.8 billion.
Peters described the acquisition as a “transformational opportunity” for the company, boosting its market capitalization to a level of $9 billion to $10 billion.
“We thought they were the top-quality assets that were available in the MOB sector for the last five years,” Peters said. “This was an opportunity for us to get critical core mass and bring value to tenants and shareholders,” he added.
Peters noted that the Duke MOB purchase also contained a development platform. Going forward, Healthcare Trust will be “a very disciplined developer,” he said.
“We’ll probably do $100 million to $250 million a year. That’s consistent with what the Duke platform did the last two or three years,” Peters said.
Meanwhile, Peters highlighted increased efficiency as the most prominent trend in the MOB segment today.