The health care industry is helping the real estate sector get back on its feet.

Medical properties are being snapped up by both local and national investors who view the properties as stable purchases because of the staying power of the tenants who inhabit them.

The most recent example: the well-publicized purchase of the Northern Colorado Rehabilitation Hospital for $29.5 million by Medical Properties Trust, a national company that purchased a $400 million, 16-property package from Ernest Health, which operates the rehab hospital in Johnstown.

Ernest Health will rent the property from its new owner and continue to operate Northern Colorado Rehabilitation Hospital, but without any of those messy maintenance responsibilities that are an owner’s burden.

Investors like medical properties because of doctors’ reluctance to change offices during the lives of their practices. Most medical properties have special assets, like ultra-reliable backup power sources or leaden walls surrounding X-ray machines.

Additions like these, coupled with the desire to keep patients comfortable by keeping them coming to the same location year after year, mean that most doctors will opt to stay in the