Thinking About Buying Another Care Home?
Before you make the decision, ask the questions that 30 years of buying, building and operating care homes taught me to ask.
Get a complimentary copy of my new book
Before You Buy Another Care Home
How to Make Better Acquisition Decisions and Build a More Valuable Group
Before your next acquisition, consider:
Does this home fit the business you're deliberately trying to build?
What are you genuinely buying that you know how to make better?
Are you paying the seller for value you still have to create?
Will this acquisition make your business more valuable — or merely larger?
By Harvey Zemmel — care-home owner and operator for more than 30 years.
I’ll Send You a Copy
A complimentary paperback copy, posted to you.
For UK care-home owners and senior decision-makers.
One complimentary copy per business.
Should You Actually Buy It?
Buying another care home can involve millions of pounds and years of management attention.
Your solicitor can examine the legal issues. Your accountant can examine the numbers. Your surveyor can examine the property.
But somebody still has to decide whether you should actually buy it.
That's the purpose of my Acquisition Decision Review.
I look at the proposed acquisition from the perspective of someone who's spent more than 30 years on the owner's side of the table.
Together, we challenge questions such as:
Does it fit the group you're trying to build?
Are you paying for value you still have to create?
The Review doesn't replace your professional advisers. It challenges the investment decision itself.
Considering an acquisition?
What can you genuinely improve — and what may be difficult to change?
What would make you walk away?
Would You Buy Your Own Business?
Imagine you sold your care-home group tomorrow and its full value was sitting in your bank account.
Now imagine you wanted to invest that money back into care homes.
Would you buy exactly the business you own today?
Most owners spend their time looking at their business as an operator — occupancy, staffing, quality, fees and today's problems.
Sometimes it's useful to look at it differently:
As an investor deciding where you would put your own money today. Would You Buy Your Own Business…
Would you buy every home in your group again today?
Which home consumes the most management attention — and is it earning a return on it?
Could the money for your next acquisition create more value in the homes you already own?
If you doubled the number of homes you own, what would break first?
These are the kinds of questions I work through with care-home owners.
Not Every £1 of EBITDA Is Worth the Same.
Two care-home groups can produce exactly the same EBITDA and still have very different values.
What would make a buyer prepared to pay more for yours?
Creating value isn't only about producing more EBITDA.
It's also about making the EBITDA you've already created more valuable. Would You Buy Your Own Business…
Strategic Advisory
I work directly with a small number of care-home owners who want an experienced owner's perspective on the bigger decisions around:
Acquisitions · Growth · Management Structure · Capital Allocation · Value Creation · Exit
Not a generic consultancy report.
An experienced outside perspective on decisions that could materially affect what your business becomes.
I've Sat on Your Side of the Table.
Along the way I've made good decisions and mistakes.
I've bought homes, sold homes, built management teams and learned what creates — and destroys — value in a care-home business.
30+ years
buying, building, operating and selling care homes.
12 homes
built in my previous group.
£6m revenue / £2m+ EBITDA
in that business.
£500k → £750k EBITDA
over seven years.
£4.5m
agreed sale price, with planning permission for a further 14 bedrooms.
paid for my more recent 68-bed care-home business.
£3.2m
My answers don't have to be your answers. But you should know what your answers are.
Harvey Zemmel
Founder, The Care Home Owner