Care and later living
Care homes and nursing homes sold as going concerns with the trading record on the record; closed homes and sites for redevelopment; over 55s and retirement homes with every charge stated before you offer; a place to find, rate and stay in a home for someone you love; and the jobs that keep them running.
Find a home for someone
Every registered home, with the regulator's report
Care homes in England are registered and inspected by the Care Quality Commission, in Wales by Care Inspectorate Wales, in Scotland by the Care Inspectorate and in Northern Ireland by the RQIA. Their reports and ratings are public. Homebinding's directory lists every registered home by place and kind of care (residential, nursing, dementia, respite, learning disability, mental health) with the regulator's latest rating beside it and a link to the full report, and lets families add their own rating and account, in their own name, moderated.
Stay, visit, try
Many homes offer respite stays of a week or two and day places. On Homebinding a home can open those like a holiday let: dates, price, what is included, and a booking with a deposit on the record. A family can book a visit or a trial stay the way they would book a room, and the home gets its calendar filled without an agency.
The money, stated
Weekly fees, what the fee includes, the funded nursing care contribution, local authority rates, top ups and the notice period are stated on each home's page in the same format, so that two homes can be compared honestly. For retirement homes for sale, the service charge, ground rent, the event fee on resale and the management company are on the record before an offer is made.
Being added
The directory is built from the public registers. It is being loaded region by region; until a region is in, the regulator's own search is one click away. If you run a home, claim its page now and add your fees, your vacancies and your respite calendar.
Selling a home as a going concern
What goes on the record
Registered beds and the registration certificate, occupancy by month, fee income by funding source, staff establishment and agency use, the regulator's last three reports, the building's compliance certificates, the lease or the title, and the accounts. Released to registered buyers under a confidentiality undertaking, with the deposit and the reservation the same as for any Homebinding sale.
Sale or redevelopment
A trading home is valued on its earnings; a closed home is valued on its site. Homebinding lists both, with the planning history for the site and the pre application response where there is one, and the RICS Red Book valuation in the pack for an auction as for any other lot.
Buying, selling and running a care home
A care home is a regulated business first and a building second. Layout, room sizes, ensuite provision and lift access set a ceiling on what it can ever earn, but nobody may operate it at all without registration, and registration is granted to people rather than to bricks. You are not buying permission to trade, you are buying an asset you must then be approved to use. This is not advice, and any purchase needs a solicitor and an accountant with sector experience.
The regulator, the provider and the manager
In England, providing personal or nursing care in a residential setting is a regulated activity, and the provider must be registered with the Care Quality Commission under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and the regulations made under it. Registration names a registered provider, which is the company, partnership or individual carrying on the activity, and in almost all cases a registered manager, a named individual who is accountable for the day to day running of the service and who must satisfy the regulator as to skills, experience and character. Both go through a fit and proper person assessment. Operating without registration, or with conditions breached, is a criminal offence.
The regulations set fundamental standards covering person centred care, dignity and respect, consent, safe care and treatment, safeguarding, nutrition, premises and equipment, complaints, good governance, staffing and the duty of candour. Services are inspected and rated, the English scale running from outstanding through good and requires improvement to inadequate, and ratings must be displayed at the home and online. A poor rating is a commercial event as much as a regulatory one: it affects local authority placements, private enquiries, insurance and lending, and it is the first thing a buyer's adviser looks at.
The other nations regulate separately: the Care Inspectorate in Scotland, which publishes graded evaluations of its own, Care Inspectorate Wales, and the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority in Northern Ireland. Each has a registered provider, a responsible individual or manager, published standards and published inspection findings, but terminology, grading scales and forms differ, so never assume an English process applies across a border.
Care Quality Commission Care Inspectorate Care Inspectorate Wales RQIA
Because registration attaches to the operator, a change of ownership is a regulatory event. A share purchase may leave the registration intact but still requires notification and scrutiny of the new controllers. An asset purchase needs a fresh registration, and that takes time. Completion is arranged so trading does not begin before registration is in place, and the timetable is set by the regulator, not the parties.
Use class C2 and what the home is worth
Residential care homes, nursing homes, hospitals and residential schools sit in class C2 of the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 in England, with equivalents in the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish orders. C2 is distinct from C3 dwellinghouses, so turning a care home into flats, or a large house into a care home, is a material change of use needing permission under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The same distinction does much of the work in extra care and assisted living, where the amount of care and the independence of residents determine the class, and authorities take different views on affordable housing contributions as a result.
A trading care home is valued as a going concern, not by the square metre. The valuer works from fee income: registered beds, actual occupancy, the split between local authority funded and privately funded residents, and the fee rates for each. Against that sit staffing costs, the dominant expense, driven by required ratios and by agency use, then food, utilities, insurance, registration fees, repairs and management. The resulting earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, adjusted to what a competent operator could achieve rather than what the owner reports, is capitalised at a yield reflecting the property, the local market, the rating and the security of the income. Homes with high private fee proportions, modern ensuite bedrooms and strong ratings command the keenest yields.
Against that sits alternative use value. Older homes with small rooms, shared bathrooms and awkward floor levels can be unviable to modernise and are often worth more as a housing redevelopment site than as a trading business. That is a common outcome, but it needs a planning judgment, because some authorities resist the loss of care capacity, and because a home cannot simply be emptied: residents need alternative placements and closure has to be handled with the regulator and the placing authorities.
Retirement and over 55s housing
Most of the later living market is housing rather than care. Retirement developments, sheltered schemes and over 55s blocks are ordinary residential accommodation with age restrictions and, usually, shared facilities and a manager. They are almost always leasehold, with a service charge covering communal areas, lifts, gardens, the emergency call system and the manager's time, and often a sinking fund contribution for major works. Service charges here are higher than in ordinary blocks because the facilities are greater, and the charge is the single most important figure for a buyer to understand before committing.
Two further features are particular to the sector. The first is the event fee, sometimes called a transfer fee, deferred management fee or exit fee, payable to the landlord or management company when the flat is sold, sublet or otherwise transferred. Event fees are lawful where properly drafted and disclosed, but they are a real cost and they must be identified early and priced into the purchase. The second is ground rent. Under the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022, ground rent in new long residential leases is limited to a peppercorn, and retirement housing was brought within that regime after a delay, so new retirement leases should carry no meaningful ground rent even though older ones may. Wider leasehold reform continues under the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024.
Between the two sit extra care and assisted living schemes, where residents hold their own flats but a care team is on site, and respite or short stay provision, where a care home room is taken for a week or two to give a family carer a break or to bridge a hospital discharge. Respite is undersupplied and often the hardest thing for a family to find at short notice.
Staffing and recruitment
Staffing is the business. A home stands or falls on whether it can recruit and keep carers, nurses where nursing is registered, a cook, domestics, maintenance and a manager who will stay. Every member of staff needs an enhanced criminal records check through the Disclosure and Barring Service, or Disclosure Scotland or AccessNI, together with references, right to work checks and induction training against the recognised care standards. Registered nurses must hold current registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
Recruiting from overseas runs through the Home Office sponsorship system: the employer holds a sponsor licence for the relevant route, assigns certificates of sponsorship, meets salary and skill requirements and complies with sponsor duties on record keeping and reporting. The rules for care roles have changed more than once in recent years, so check the current immigration rules directly rather than relying on how the route worked before. Agency dependence is expensive and valuers treat it as a weakness, so a stable, directly employed team is part of what a buyer pays for.
Care on the site
Homebinding lists care homes both ways. A home for sale as a going concern is presented with its registration details, its bed numbers, its rating and the trading position the seller wishes to disclose, so a buyer can see the business as well as the building. A home for sale for redevelopment is listed as a site, with its planning position stated. Retirement and over 55s properties are listed with their tenure, their service charge and any event fee flagged on the page, because those are the figures buyers most often discover too late.
Respite and short stays are bookable, in the same way as any other stay on the site, so a family looking for a fortnight's care can see who has a room and when. Homes carry reviews written by residents and their families rather than by anonymous accounts, and every home has a vacancies section where the operator can advertise carer, nurse, catering and management posts. Listing a vacancy is free to the employer.
This is not advice. Sources: the Care Quality Commission on registration, the fundamental standards and ratings in England; the Care Inspectorate in Scotland, Care Inspectorate Wales and the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority in Northern Ireland; legislation.gov.uk for the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and the regulations made under it, the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987, the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 and the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024; the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on use classes and change of use; the Disclosure and Barring Service, Disclosure Scotland and AccessNI on criminal records checks; the Nursing and Midwifery Council on nurse registration; UK Visas and Immigration on sponsor licences and the skilled worker route; Skills for Care on workforce standards; and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors on the valuation of trading healthcare property.
