Care Homes for Sale UK: Selling a Care Home

Buyers fall into distinct tiers, and the tier that shows up for your home depends heavily on size and condition, not just headline reputation.

First-time buyers and local independents target under-30-bed converted homes, commonly below £2 million. Christie Finance reported 29% of its 2024 funded deals were first-time buyers, with average debt below £1 million. Expect roughly 4.5x to 6.5x sustainable EBITDARM, usually conditional on bank valuation and regulator approval.

Regional consolidators with 3 to 19 homes were the single largest buyer category in H1 2025, completing 32% of Christie's deals. This group includes PH Care Group, Hartford Care, Keane Premier Group, Morrison Community Care and B&M Care. Hartford reached 45 homes after absorbing 16 Select Healthcare sites in 2026; Keane Premier acquired Priority Care Group in Scotland the same year. They target 20 to 59-bed homes within their management radius, typically paying 5x to 9x EBITDARM with stronger cash-at-completion than first-time buyers.

National strategic operators - Care UK, Barchester Healthcare, HC-One, Gold Care Homes in London and the South East, and Cygnet Healthcare for specialist assets - prefer modern 50 to 80+ bed homes or portfolios, typically at 8x to 12x for premium operational stock.

Institutional real-estate capital, including Welltower, Omega Healthcare Investors, Target Healthcare REIT, CareTrust REIT and Aedifica, buys PropCo portfolios and sale-and-leaseback assets rather than individual OpCo businesses. Omega paid £241 million for 46 Four Seasons freeholds in June 2025. This capital prices from sustainable rent and yield, roughly 4.75% to 10% depending on quality, not from OpCo EBITDA directly.

PE-backed platforms, such as Foundation Partners and Deer Capital behind Select Healthcare/Hartford, look for scalable management and buy-and-build routes. Headline price on these deals often includes rollover equity, earnout or vendor loan, so compare cash at completion, not the multiple alone.

A word on independent buyer mix: small and medium groups (3-19 homes) took 32% of deals, independents with 1-2 homes took 31%, first-time buyers 17%, and groups above 20 homes only 20%. A well-run 20 to 39-bed home genuinely has more credible bidders than the "big corporates only" assumption suggests.

Care homes are valued as trade-related properties, not on a simple per-bed number. RICS practice uses the profits method: normalise turnover and profit to what a reasonably efficient operator would achieve, then apply a market multiplier. Reported EBITDA is evidence toward that figure, not the figure itself.

Published anchors from Christie & Co's healthcare team put older or converted homes at 5.0x to 8.0x sustainable EBITDARM, and modern purpose-built homes at 8.0x to 12.0x. Closed 2024 transactions spread more broadly, from 5x to 12x profit and £30,000 to £360,000 per bed, though that range mixes weak and premium stock and shouldn't be read as a median.

The size-tier figures below are estimates, triangulated from those published anchors and current buyer mix, not disclosed national medians:

Worked example. A 30-bed converted freehold home with sustainable EBITDARM of £280,000, after normalising for a market-rate registered manager salary and stripping out one-off grant income, sits in the 20-39 bed tier. At 5.0x to 8.0x, that's an enterprise value range of £1.4 million to £2.24 million. If the home carries £300,000 of debt and normal working capital is settled at completion, equity proceeds land roughly £1.1 million to £1.94 million before tax and deal costs. That's before deducting any earn-out risk or escrow the buyer's lender insists on.

For a fuller breakdown of methods and what moves the multiple, our valuation calculator walks through your own numbers, and you can read more on how sector valuation works generally in healthcare sector M&A.

From 6 April 2026, Business Asset Disposal Relief taxes qualifying gains at 18%, up to a £1 million lifetime limit, provided the seller holds the required 5% economic and voting interest and meets the two-year trading conditions. Property held personally or through a separate PropCo, and any pre-sale restructuring, need bespoke review before you assume BADR applies.

Regulated residential care is normally VAT-exempt, and a transfer of a going concern can fall outside VAT scope if conditions are met, but a wholly exempt business creates technical traps and goodwill can become standard-rated if TOGC treatment fails. Get VAT drafting agreed before heads of terms become binding, not after.

Buyer-side property taxes vary by nation: SDLT in England and Northern Ireland runs 0% to £150,000, 2% to £250,000 and 5% above; Scotland's LBTT and Wales's LTT follow broadly similar tiered structures with different thresholds. None of this is seller cost directly, but it affects what a buyer can afford to offer.

London has the lowest bed provision per capita of any English region but the highest occupancy at 87%, per CQC's State of Care data. Property, wages and fee mix vary enormously by borough, so there's no defensible blanket London premium, though scarcity and private-pay catchments do support strong pricing for the right asset.

Scotland saw over £250 million of care sales in 2025, including the 219-bed Pacific Care group and the seven-home, 478-bed Thistle Healthcare portfolio. Scotland had 772 homes and roughly 36,000 beds entering 2026, but only 55% were purpose-built and just 36% had full wetrooms, which is a real gap consolidators are paying to close. Sellers should expect the Care Inspectorate's stated six-month target for a new-provider registration to shape completion timing.

Birmingham, Essex and Manchester sit inside the regional-consolidator heartland where groups like Hartford Care, PH Care and B&M Care actively cluster homes for management and agency-cost efficiency. Well-run 20 to 59-bed homes in these catchments were the most competitively bid tier in H1 2025. Full city-level pages covering local buyer activity are coming; for now the national multiples and process above apply directly.