Impact Healthcare REIT has purchased a portfolio of six care homes from Morris Care for £56 million, which will partly paid in cash and partly with an issue of Impact shares.

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

Morris Care delivers high acuity care and has established 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. 

Knight Frank facilitated the sale. Julian Evans, head of healthcare at Knight Frank said: “We are delighted 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.”

Evans said record volumes of capital was being deployed into UK healthcare, and that within the past six weeks alone, Knight Frank has transacted on  around £500 million of healthcare assets.