Nationwide Health Properties Proposes Offering : Stock: Real estate investment trust specializing in health care facilities is trying to raise cash to buy 25 mortgages from the RTC.

Nationwide Health Properties Inc., trying to cover an $85.6-million promissory note it owes the Resolution Trust Corp. for 25 mortgages it has agreed to buy, has filed a request to sell 2 million shares of its stock to the public.

The company, a real estate investment trust specializing in health care properties, hopes to raise $56 million in the proposed offering, according to an S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Company officials were not available for comment Wednesday.

Catherine C. Creswell, a stock analyst for the brokerage Alex. Brown & Sons Inc. in Baltimore, said the proposed stock offering was a logical next step for Nationwide Health Properties, which hopes to close the real estate deal with the RTC by July 9.

“I’m not surprised at all,” Creswell said. “They didn’t have that much cash available.”

Nationwide Health Properties’ chief executive, R. Bruce Andrews, said on June 1 that the company had struck a deal with the RTC to buy 25 mortgages covering 45 convalescent homes in a dozen states.

The $85.6 million the company agreed to pay the RTC, which acquired the mortgages from a failed Missouri thrift, represents an 11% discount on the $96.1-million value of the loans.

If Nationwide Health Properties succeeds in taking over the mortgages, it will mark the first time the company has bought mortgages to increase its assets rather than purchasing a health care facility outright.

Nationwide Health Properties, which had 1991 revenue of $36.4 million, usually buys health care facilities and then leases out the businesses to operators.

The agreement to purchase the mortgages, once held by Home Federal Savings of Kansas City, was made after Nationwide officials estimated that the deal could bring the company a 14% profit on its investment.

The average time of maturity for the balloon mortgages, taken out between 1985 and 1988, is four years, Andrews said at the time.

When the mortgages come due, the company plans either to renegotiate the loan or to buy out the owner-operator and lease the facility back.

Creswell said she does not expect the stock offering to dilute the value of the company’s shares. If approved by the SEC, the offering would give Nationwide 15.5 million shares outstanding.

Creswell said the offering is expected to be underwritten by Britain’s National Westminster Bank PLC.

Using equity instead of borrowing money outright to pay for the properties is a good strategy, Creswell said. She said she does not know what other form of financing the company will use to finalize the RTC deal.

“I imagine he will use some debt,” she said of Andrews. “He does not want to use a lot of leverage. But they can easily take on the additional debt.”

Nationwide Health Properties’ stock, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, closed Wednesday at $27.87 a share, down 12 cents.