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Care home

How to Sell Your Care Home

Selling a care home can be difficult. Read this to make it easier.

More Canadians are living over the age of 80, and the country’s aging population is expected to quadruple by 2051.

As life expectancy continues to grow, so does the senior care home industry, with more options and different types of facilities available. This is a great time to be selling a care home business; but be aware – with more demand comes more competition.

Preparation for saleSell Your Business

You only get one chance at a first impression, so it’s important your care home business is looking its best when potential buyers come for inspections. Spend some time and money completing any necessary maintenance work before you put your business up for sale.

Your employees are a very important aspect of your care home. Although they may not be aware of your plans to sell the business, how they engage and work together will be seen by prospective buyers. Make sure you have no employee issues throughout the selling process.

Your accounts must be in order before you put your business on the market; interested parties may ask to review the last three-to-five years of bookkeeping. It could be worth including projections of how the business is forecast to perform over the next two years.

You need to be realistic about how your business is performing; what type of reputation does your care home have in the industry? How good is the quality of care? How have you performed during recent inspections?

Your business reputation needs to be high for you to be in a good position to negotiate on price. If your care home is run down, has a bad reputation within the area or isn’t making enough profit, you will need to consider selling your business at a much lower price.

Marketing your business

Hiring a business broker who understands the care home industry can be worth the extra cost. Because there are so many rules and regulations within the sector, it can help to have an expert on your side, and you can also benefit from their valuable list of contacts.

If you plan to manage the sale process by yourself, then listing your business online is a great first step. Local newspaper, radio and magazine listings can be effective, but listing an advert online will help you to reach a wider audience of entrepreneurs.  

Does your residential home specialise in specific care, such as care for those suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s? If so, it could be worth contacting publications that are specifically targeted towards these health issues to advertise your care home business.

Finding the right buyer

Taking on a care home business is a big task. Each state and council will have their own regulations on how a care home must operate and a lack of competence could have detrimental effects on your residents, who will generally be elderly and vulnerable.

To run a care home business, you need to be compassionate and have a genuine interest in helping people, along with the patience to care for people who are less mobile and mentally stable. You also need to have the strength to deal with difficult situations such as illness or death.

Finding the right buyer for your care home business may take a while, and serious buyers may ask to shadow you to get a better idea on what the daily operations involve. Offer buyers as much information as possible to give them more confidence in their decision.



Krystena Griffin

About the author

Krystena Griffin writes for all titles in the Dynamis stable including BusinessesForSale.com, FranchiseSales.com and PropertySales.com as well as other industry publications.

@Be_TheBoss