Knight Frank Disposes of Six Care Homes to Impact Healthcare REIT for £56 million

Property adviser Knight Frank has sold a portfolio of six care homes which were owned and operated by Morris Care Limited to Impact Healthcare REIT. The purchase price was £56 million, which will partly be paid in cash and partly with an issue of Impact shares.

The portfolio comprises 438 high quality beds, of which 400 have en suite bathrooms, with five homes in Shropshire and one in Cheshire.

Morris Care enjoys a strong local reputation for delivering high acuity care and has established good working relationships with the local NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups. The vendors have granted a licence for the homes to continue to trade under the Morris Care brand for three years and the operational management team of Morris Care will transfer to Welford Healthcare, which will manage the homes, on 35-year lease terms.

Julian Evans, Head of Healthcare at Knight Frank, commented:
“We are pleased to have advised Morris Care on the sale of their best-in-class care home portfolio to Impact REIT. The transaction is a credit to the Morris family and all staff associated with the care business, in providing a first-class service, which has been created over the past 25 years. The business is now under the excellent management of Welford Healthcare.

“Despite an uncertain political and economic climate, this transaction is yet another endorsement for the robustness of UK healthcare real estate.”

Knight Frank is seeing record volumes of capital was being deployed into UK healthcare and within the last six weeks alone has transacted on c.£500M of healthcare assets.