Markham’s Sienna Senior Living acquiring Stittsville retirement home for $48M

David Sali

February 21, 2025

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A southern Ontario company is acquiring a retirement home in Ottawa’s west end for $48 million in one of the city’s biggest multi-residential real estate transactions of the past year. Markham-based Sienna Senior Living said this week it has agreed to purchase Wildpine Residence, a 165-suite property in Stittsville, from a group of local investors. Opened in 2019, the four-storey property consists of 119 independent-living and 46 assisted-living units. The facility includes multiple dining rooms as well as a pub, lounge, theatre, cafe and fitness centre. Sienna also announced it is purchasing a 192-bed long-term care facility in Mississauga for $32.6 million. “We are excited to further expand our operations with two high-quality acquisitions in Ontario, generating immediate synergies with our existing portfolio and enhancing the size and quality of our diversified asset base,” David Hung, Sienna’s chief financial officer and executive vice-president of investments, said in a statement, adding the acquisitions “will be completed at a significant discount to replacement cost.” In a news release, Sienna said the Stittsville property’s occupancy is “stabilized” and is expected to benefit from “rapidly improving supply-demand fundamentals in the Ottawa market.” The company said it will pay for the acquisition, which is expected to close in mid-2025, by assuming about $25 million in debt insured by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., with the rest of the financing coming from general corporate funds. Sienna is acquiring the property at a capitalization rate of 6.25 per cent. Founded in 1972 as Leisureworld Senior Care Corp., Sienna went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2010 and adopted its current name in 2015. The company currently owns and operates more than 80 facilities in Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Sienna’s portfolio already includes two other local properties, the Red Oak retirement home in Kanata and the Bearbrook retirement home in Blackburn Hamlet. Sienna also operates retirement residences in Arnprior and Perth. The deal comes amid a wave of multi-residential transactions in the National Capital Region. According to Colliers, Ottawa’s biggest multi-residential real estate transaction of 2024 was Forum Asset Management’s $183-million acquisition of a 579-unit student residence near the University of Ottawa. It was one of four deals involving multi-residential properties on last year’s top-10 list as the asset class accounted for $1.37 billion in transactions – more than half of Ottawa’s total deal volume of $2.23 billion. It marked the fifth consecutive year that multi-residential properties were the top-performing asset class in Ottawa, Colliers said.