Selling a home care business after Support at Home

The first thing a buyer will want to understand is how fully your clients use their services, since providers are now paid for the services they deliver, drawn from each client's quarterly budget. They'll look at utilisation, how long clients tend to stay with you, and how many are likely to move into residential care in the next couple of years, and in most cases a smaller client base that is well used will be worth more than a larger one with a lot of unspent budget.

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Care management gets close attention as well. Package management fees have gone and care management is now funded from a separate allocation of 10 per cent of each client's budget, so a buyer will ask how many clients each of your care managers looks after and what that has meant for quality and for keeping clients. They'll also look at where your clients are, because a business with clients concentrated in one region costs less to run than one with clients spread across a state, and at your registration history, including audits, complaints and any compliance action, all of which is read well before an offer is made.

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What the market is doing

The economics of home care tightened over the first year of Support at Home, and a number of providers have decided that the scale the program now requires is better found inside a larger group. In 2026 Anglicare Sydney agreed to sell its community home care business to HammondCare and Living Choice sold its home care business to Five Good Friends, both pointing to scale, and in the same quarter Regis Healthcare agreed to acquire Royal Freemasons' Victorian home care business. The buyers in this market include not-for-profit consolidators, listed residential operators, private equity backed platforms and technology-led operators, and because each of them is buying for different reasons, they tend to value the same business quite differently.

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How the sale is structured

Registration sits with the legal entity, which means that in a share sale the registration generally stays in place and the main obligation is to notify the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission within 14 days of becoming aware of certain changes, such as a change in the people responsible for the business. In an asset sale the buyer must already be registered in the right categories, and your clients move across through a service delivery branch transfer with at least 90 days' notice to the Department, which takes planning and is where value is most often lost when it's left too late. The choice between the two is usually made early in the process, and it has a real bearing on which buyers are in a position to proceed. The mechanics depend on how the deal is structured, and your lawyer should confirm them for your transaction.

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Preparing in the year before a sale

The most useful thing most owners can do is keep good monthly information on utilisation, client tenure, care manager caseloads and staff turnover, because a buyer will ask for all of it and the business looks much stronger when the answers are ready. It's also worth checking that your published prices are defensible and applied consistently, closing out any open audit findings with the evidence kept on file, and gradually stepping back from client relationships and day-to-day decisions so the business is seen to run without you.

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How we work with home care owners

We start with the decision that comes before any sale, which is whether to sell, when, to whom and in what structure, and where a sale is the right answer we run the process and stay involved through the transfer of clients and staff after completion.