EXCLUSIVE: Understanding Real Estate For Psychedelic Treatments Boosted By Geospatial Mapping

Facing high patient demand for psychedelic-assisted therapies (PAT) once FDA-approved, two partner organizations are advancing an AI-powered solution to identify oversaturated clinic clusters and opportunities forward. (See Part 1 of the conversation.) 

Healing Realty Trust’s president, Cody Shandraw, says the company combines a tenant-led, tenant-focused modality with a choice of buildings that are transitional, repurposing property.

“Medical office real estate is one of the most stable asset classes in the world, providing security for us and for investors and shareholders,” he told Benzinga. “It's really making sure that we're not just getting single-use types of buildings as seen early on in the cannabis space,” referring to multibillion-dollar growth facilities that hardly retain their built-in value once operators rotated.

And further, it provides the security of having access to traditional types of banking. “A stable asset class like real estate is always going to be around the most profitable segment of investing for the last 50 years, sort of maybe IBM IBM or Apple AAPL.”

For Shandraw, three types of real estate deals will emerge in the next 24-36 months: the Numinus model (in-house trained therapists that get pre-qualified and contract the geospatial tool to identify areas of interest, legacy behavioral and mental health operators. Then there are single operators expanding their service footprint. 

Real-Time Data & Competition

The partnership with HealingMaps, a nine-year exclusive deal, gives Healing Realty aggregated information on the existing and potentially built above-ground mental health facilities, including ketamine centers. It also shows how many people are searching for these therapies, in real-time, in any U.S. city or state.

Benzinga accessed the platform’s demo guided by HealingMaps CEO, Cory Jones, who says Healing Realty uses the geospatial tool both proactively and reactively for their clients. He agreed with Shandraw in that the industry’s foreseeable future, with MDMA therapy approved, means that VA facilities will become “very important references” as many veteran patients typically have higher rates of PTSD. 

The tool’s top goal is “to understand where every single zip code is.” The partners have begun applying scores to certain areas, resulting from a number of data points weighted differently, number of mental health facilities in the area, proximity to VA, geographical density and average patient need.

According to Shandraw, there’s virtually nobody else in psychedelics real estate right now. 

“I really had a front-row seat to watch the vacuum that was present for the field,” considering 90% of the money invested in the psychedelics sector has so far gone to drug development although there was almost nowhere for them to be delivered.

The situation is due to the stigma around psychedelics and the newness of the industry. There’s no prior handbook for this experiential, in-clinic medicine requiring brick-and-mortar facilities.

And yet, he says, “It’s really the best of both worlds: The asymmetric upside from being a new industry, but with the traditional legacy of investment with the real estate forces -these buildings can easily be repurposed for any type of medical procedure. They're all zoned for medical assisting."

Healing Realty’s chief real estate officer, Tyler Zakovich says the HM data also allows for checking search history in different areas and comparing it with current demand and competition, population density, income and existing cash-pay models, providing the team and its tenants with a competitive advantage.

“There's just such a gap in the infrastructure for the facilitation of this medicine, and that's what we're focusing on,” Zakoveich said, adding that their longer-term aim is to become a holistic wellness real estate business.

Photo: Benzinga edit with photo by Bacsica, aiyoshi597, Gisele Yashar and metamorworks on Shutterstock.