Who Owns Welltower?

Welltower began as Health Care Fund in Lima, Ohio in 1970, created by Fritz Wolfe and Bruce Thompson to own nursing home real estate under the then-new REIT structure. Wolfe's family construction company had been building nursing homes since 1963. The fund went public in 1971 and listed on NASDAQ in 1978 under the symbol HCFDS.

The company moved to the American Stock Exchange in 1984 as HCN, converted from a business trust to a Delaware corporation in 1985 under the name Health Care REIT, and relocated its headquarters from Lima to Toledo in 1986. Shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange in December 1992.

For most of its early life the company was a passive landlord to nursing home operators, collecting rent on triple-net leases. Under CEO George Chapman (1996 to 2014), the company diversified into seniors housing, medical office buildings, and life science properties, and it became one of the largest healthcare landlords in the country. The 2008 RIDEA legislation was pivotal: it allowed REITs to participate in seniors housing operating income rather than only rent, and Health Care REIT began shifting toward ownership of operating communities run with partner operators.

Thomas DeRosa succeeded Chapman in 2014 and renamed the company Welltower in September 2015. The ticker changed from HCN to WELL in 2018. Under Shankh Mitra, who became CEO in 2020, the company accelerated the shift to seniors housing operating properties, selling hospital and post-acute assets and buying upscale seniors housing portfolios. The strategy positions Welltower as a bet on the "silver economy": housing and wellness demand from the aging 80-plus population, a cohort projected to grow sharply through the 2030s.

The pandemic tested that shift early. Occupancy dropped across the seniors housing portfolio in 2020 and 2021, but the operating model recovered as vaccination spread and deferred move-ins returned. By 2024 and 2025, Welltower was deploying capital into seniors housing at a pace no prior period in its history matched, funded by equity issued at a premium valuation.

In FY2025, Welltower reported revenue of $10.84 billion and net income of $936.85 million. Revenue for the first nine months of 2026 reached $10.6 billion, nearly matching the full prior year, as the seniors housing portfolio grew through acquisition.