February 2019
Enfield Borough Council put a number of property assets on the market in 2016 which included four existing care homes. Having missed out in a competitive bidding process, GCW tracked the sale and secured a position for Hamberley Development to purchase one of the sites after the initial buyer failed to perform.
The Enfield deal is the second acquisition of a care home site on behalf of Hamberley after the purchase of a 0.9 acre site in Sevenoaks which recently formed part of a 130 bed, £37 million sale and leaseback to Target Healthcare. In a third GCW deal, Hamberley has also exchanged contracts on a site in Basingstoke which will complete in 2019.
GCW is building a strong presence in the burgeoning care home sector. It is also advising on a number of opportunities for Octopus Healthcare who has over £1.6 bn invested across the sector in the UK and Ireland.
“An increasing number of our landlord and developer clients are seeking our advice on how best to include an element of care or retirement uses within their schemes” says GCW associate director Tim Ashe.
With the top six providers owning just 11% of care homes or 17% of beds in the UK, the market remains fragmented with the vast majority of care taking place in independently operated homes. This represents a huge opportunity for continued institutional investment in the sector which has been attracted by the stability of the primarily long-dated income where care operators tend to sign up to 25 to 35 year leases with fixed uplifts.