Feature Story: ‘Floodgates’ for MOB sales could open in 2025

After a ‘muted’ 2024, Revista panelists say a turnaround could happen

By John B. Mugford

The “Facts & Figures: Understanding the 2025 Landscape of Medical Real Estate” session during the Revista conference featured (from left to right): Ben Ochs of Anchor Health Properties, Gina Weldy of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare and Todd Kibler of Hammes Partners. Hilda Martin and Mike Hargrave of Revista (not pictured) shared industry data and led the discussion. (HREI™ photo)

While medical outpatient building (MOB) occupancy and rental rates continue to rise throughout the country’s top 50 markets, the news that many professionals involved in the sector would like to hear is that the transactional volume is on the rise.

Those folks might have to wait a bit longer for that to happen. Fourth quarter (Q4) MOB sales came in at $2.2 billion, which was slightly less than the volume of each of the two previous quarters. For the year, MOB sales volume totaled $13.6 billion – a figure that was inflated by the more than $4 billion worth of sales that were part of the early 2024 merger of two publicly traded real estate investment trusts (REITs), Healthpeak Properties Inc. (NYSE: DOC) and Physicians Realty Trust.

If that $4 billion is excluded for comparison reasons, the 2024 volume was about $9.6 billion, an increase of about 15.6 percent over 2023, when sales fell to an eight-year low of $8.2 billion.

These numbers were part of the extensive healthcare real estate (HRE) and MOB data presented by Mike Hargrave and Hilda Martin during the 2025 Revista Medical Real Estate Investment Forum held from Feb. 3-5 at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Mr. Hargrave and Ms. Martin are both principals with Arnold, Md.-based Revista, which compiles a wide range of HRE and MOB data for its subscribers.

“Even if you take that $4 billion-plus out, the transaction activity for 2024 was