Welltower has paid $99.6 million for Novelle Senior Living, a 195-unit assisted living and memory care community in San Jose's Willow Glen neighborhood, in an all-cash deal that closed with little public fanfare but plenty of financial upside for the sellers. The sale works out to roughly $510,800 per unit, and it lands just weeks after another senior housing property 2.5 miles down the same expressway fetched over $100 million of its own.
According to The Real Deal, the sellers, Columbia Pacific Advisors and SRM Development, originally bought the property for $16.5 million back in 2019 and then secured a $78.5 million construction loan in 2022 to build out the community. All told, they invested $95 million in developing the project, meaning the $99.6 million sale price to a Welltower affiliate came in about 4.8 percent higher than their combined site and construction costs. The property was completed in 2025, per the same account.
Novelle Senior Living sits at 3355 Almaden Expressway. According to developer SRM Development, the four-story, 197,867-square-foot building holds 166 assisted living units and 29 memory care units, along with 18,373 square feet of shared amenity space that includes a commercial kitchen, bistro, theater, gym, and salon, plus 115 outdoor parking spaces. Day-to-day operations are handled on-site by Merrill Gardens, a senior living operator with more than three decades in the industry.
A Corridor Suddenly Flush With Nine-Figure Deals
The Novelle sale is the second nine-figure senior housing transaction on the Almaden Expressway corridor in a matter of weeks. Just 2.5 miles south at 4610 Almaden Expressway, American Healthcare REIT acquired Avella at Almaden, a 200-unit luxury senior housing property built in 2020, for $102.8 million, or $514,000 per unit, in an all-cash deal, as Hoodline's earlier coverage detailed. That property changed hands from the seller Alliance Residential.
The buying spree extends beyond San Jose proper. Harrison Street Real Estate purchased the Ivy Park at Los Gatos community from Chronograph Properties and Swenson for $54 million in 2025, the report notes. In March 2026, Calson Management sold Crescent Oaks in Sunnyvale for about $11.8 million and Silver Oaks in Menlo Park for roughly $12.3 million, while Kalesta Healthcare Group paid nearly $24.3 million to acquire developments in Sunnyvale and Menlo Park that same month.
Why Institutional Capital Keeps Circling Silicon Valley
The flurry of deals reflects what the industry has taken to calling a silver tsunami of demand, with Silicon Valley senior living properties drawing increasing investor interest as the demographic wave expands nationally. U.S. Census Bureau data shows Santa Clara County is home to 282,010 residents aged 65 and older as of 2024, about 14.8% of the county's 1.93 million total residents. A January 2025 study by the Public Policy Institute of California projects the state's 65-and-older population will grow 59% by 2040, with Santa Clara County seeing one of the largest increases in Asian older adults, rising from 98,000 to nearly 225,000.
Santa Clara County's median household income of $168,154 helps support the kind of private-pay rates that make deals like Novelle attractive to institutional buyers. Nationally, the numbers back up the appetite: the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care reported that senior housing occupancy across 99 primary and secondary U.S. metro markets hit 90.1% in the second quarter of 2026, crossing the 90% threshold for the first time since 2007. Average monthly asking rents rose 4.6% year-over-year to $5,911 in the same quarter, according to Multi-Housing News, even as total units under construction nationwide fell below 16,000 amid elevated debt, labor, and material costs.
Welltower's Buying Spree Shows No Sign of Slowing
Welltower, described as the world's largest healthcare real estate investment trust, has been on an aggressive acquisition tear. The company reported completing $6.2 billion in predominantly off-market transactions during the second quarter of 2026 alone, according to MarketBeat, bringing its full-year 2026 investment pipeline commitments to $15.5 billion. The REIT also posted a 25% year-over-year jump in normalized funds from operations to $1.60 per share, driven by 20.5% net operating income growth in its senior housing operating portfolio, per Stockopedia.
That corporate momentum is playing out against a backdrop of historic national transaction volume. Rolling four-quarter senior housing sales across the country hit $24 billion by late 2025, their highest annual total in a decade, according to industry tracking data cited in earlier Hoodline reporting. For Willow Glen residents, the Novelle sale is unlikely to change daily operations, since Merrill Gardens continues managing the property, but it underscores just how much institutional money is flowing into the neighborhood's senior housing stock as the broader affordability squeeze for middle-income seniors continues to build.
