A care home is not financed like a shop or a warehouse. It is underwritten as a specialist operating business that happens to sit inside a building, so a lender looks first at the cash the home generates and the quality of the operation behind it, and only then at the bricks and mortar. That is why a trading care home is valued on a going-concern basis, usually well above its bricks-and-mortar value, and why metrics like EBITDARM, occupancy, the split between self-pay and local-authority fees, and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) rating decide your terms. Every episode of Care Homes Finance translates that specialist world into plain English.

This is the show for the people who own, run, buy, invest in or advise on UK care homes and nursing homes: operators, investors, first-time buyers and experienced groups, and the solicitors, accountants and valuers around them. We cover the full range of care home finance and care home mortgages, from acquisition finance and development funding for new beds, to refinance and equity release, short-term bridging, distressed and turnaround funding, and group and portfolio facilities for multi-site operators. We explain typical loan to value, debt service cover and the pricing bands on offer, and how to match each requirement to the right lender.

We never name individual lenders. Instead we explain the three broad camps, specialist healthcare lenders, challenger banks and high-street banks, where each sits on risk and appetite, and how the Bank of England base rate feeds through to care home borrowing. We also explain why the CQC rating is the single biggest swing factor on both pricing and lender appetite, and what a downgrade actually does to the value of a home, because value is a multiple of earnings.

Every figure is grounded in current sector research. We draw on Knight Frank, Savills, CBRE, Carterwood, LaingBuisson, the Office for National Statistics and the CQC, so you get credible numbers rather than guesswork: the structural demand from an ageing population, the shortfall in modern, purpose-built beds, recovering operating margins, average occupancy, and the record weight of capital now chasing the sector. The aim is simple. Help you read your own trading story the way a lender reads it, and present it to the right lender on the right terms.

Hosted by Georgina at Care Homes Finance, with written analysis by founder Matt Lenzie. New episodes land quarterly, with the occasional bulletin when the rate cycle or the regulatory picture shifts.