Real estate developers Hicks Ventures and Artemis Real Estate Partners signed a $100 million joint venture to develop about 20 inpatient rehabilitation and behavioral health hospitals, the companies announced Thursday.

More real estate developers and investment company Yes Focus on the post-acute and outpatient sector As the population ages, interest rates remain low, repayment trends change and technology advances. Houston-based Hicks Ventures also has a post-acute facility with an inpatient dialysis suite in the pipeline.

“As the post-acute and behavioral health markets continue to expand rapidly, the joint venture with Artemis Real Estate Partners will allow us to develop 18-20 hospitals or approximately $400 million worth of projects to add to our portfolio,” Larry Vaile , director of healthcare and head of Hicks Ventures, said in a press release.

According to a recent data, there has been a significant increase in third-party healthcare real estate developments, accounting for 42% of current developments analyze From consulting firm H2C Securities. Construction costs have risen by about 18 percent by the end of last year, and third-party developers can often build more efficiently than sanitation systems, H2C experts said.

“High demand and supply bottlenecks (medical office buildings) have accelerated investor interest in alternative medical real estate assets,” H2C wrote in its report. September report“There is now an eye on additional post-acute care assets such as inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, etc., with a lot of dry powder capital waiting to be deployed in the market.”

Hicks Ventures will break ground in March on a 53,000-square-foot post-acute unit in Wausau, Wisconsin, with a 42-bed facility and an inpatient dialysis room. The company last year sold three fully leased inpatient rehabilitation hospitals to Medical Properties Trust and MedProperties for $86.8 million.

Over the past 20 years, Hicks Ventures has completed more than $1 billion in healthcare development projects, including six acute care hospitals, seven inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, eight long-term acute care hospitals and nine medical office buildings.