Who owns the care homes? Follow the fees from the bedroom to Toledo, Ohio

The sign outside says Barchester. The staff wear Barchester uniforms, the invoice comes on Barchester paper, and the £1,500 a week a family pays is paid to Barchester. But since 16 October 2025, the company that employs those staff has belonged to Mint UK Holdco LLC, a limited liability company incorporated in the United States, and the building itself, along with 274 others that were Barchester's, belongs to Welltower Inc, a real estate investment trust headquartered at 4500 Dorr Street, Toledo, Ohio. This is how most of Britain's care homes are now owned, and almost nobody living in one knows it.¹⁷⁹

We set out to answer a simple question: who owns the care homes, and how much of the fee a resident pays reaches the care? The answer took us through the Competition and Markets Authority's files on the largest care home transaction ever done, Welltower's filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the freshly filed accounts of the two biggest operators, and a decade of research into where the money goes. The operators' accounts are attached to this story so readers can check them. What follows is what the documents say.

The deal that redrew the map

On 23 and 24 October 2025 Welltower completed four purchases at once: the property interests in 275 care homes managed by Barchester, 279 managed by HC-One, 70 managed by Aria Care and Asprey, and 25 by Danforth Care. It told its shareholders it had paid about £5.2bn for the Barchester portfolio, including roughly £760m in units of its operating partnership, and £1.2bn for HC-One. Together with Care UK, Avery, Signature and Sunrise, which it already owned, the CMA counts Welltower's UK estate at more than 900 existing care homes. Investment in UK healthcare property passed £12bn in 2025, about four times the average of the previous five years, and Welltower alone accounted for most of it.²⁴⁵²⁶

How it owns them matters as much as that it does. Welltower's slides describe two structures. In 152 Barchester homes it is a landlord on a triple-net lease, in which the operator pays rent and all costs, with the rent rising 3.5% a year and a reset every five years at Welltower's option. In the other 111, and in the developments, it uses what US tax law calls a RIDEA structure: the trust owns the home, the operator runs it for a fee, and Welltower takes the operating profit. The CMA found that in those homes Welltower approves the annual business plan and budget, funds the capital spending, and can remove the operator without cause. It underwrote the Barchester deal to an unlevered return in the low double digits on a portfolio that was under 80% occupied.²⁵

Barchester: from Jersey to a New York trust

Barchester Healthcare Limited filed its 2025 group accounts on 22 September, and they read like an autopsy of a company that has been taken apart and reassembled. Until 16 October 2025 its ultimate parent was Grove Limited, incorporated in Jersey, the vehicle through which three Irish businessmen owned it for two decades. From that date its immediate parent and ultimate controlling party is Mint UK Holdco LLC, incorporated in the United States. The next day the group sold the trade and assets of 85 homes, and the day after that six property subsidiaries. It now operates 9,804 beds in 150 registered services of its own and manages a further 111 homes with 6,852 beds for a third party, which the CMA identifies as Welltower, under a management services agreement in return for a fee linked to the homes' performance.²⁷

The register of persons with significant control tells you who is behind the LLC. On 16 October 2025 Barchester registered two individuals at an address on Third Avenue, New York: Chaim Shimon Deutsch, born in April 1995, who through control of a trust holds more than half of the shares and voting rights, and Judah Aryeh Derdyk, born in November 1950, who holds between a quarter and a half. The CMA's decisions describe Barchester's operating business as owned by entities affiliated with Apex Healthcare Properties LLC, a New York firm that invests in American nursing homes and entered Britain with this deal. Companies House does not record the relationship between the trust and Apex, and none of the people named responded to the CMA's public consultation. So the largest care home brand in Britain is run by a company controlled, through a trust, by a 31-year-old whose name has never appeared in coverage of the sale.¹²⁸

The money tells the rest. Revenue was £977.6m. Earnings before rent, interest, tax and depreciation, the number the industry uses to value itself, were £274.1m, down from £294.1m. Operating profit fell by £89.9m to £4.1m, dragged down by an £18.3m rise in share-based payments, a £15.4m increase in the external rent charge "following the replacement of existing leases with new lease agreements", and a £42.7m impairment of the buildings it kept. Net assets fell from £256.5m to £29.6m. And in the ten months to 23 October, before the two ceased to be related parties, Barchester paid £104.6m in rent to Limecay Limited, a landlord under the same ownership, on top of lease payments to six further connected property companies. Rent, in other words, was already leaving the operating company to its own shareholders before the Americans arrived; the new leases simply changed who receives it, and how much: the group's operating lease commitments, £2.0bn at the end of 2024, stood at £5.9bn a year later. The company recorded a loss of £29.5m for the year. It also paid dividends of £207.7m, against none the year before, and now states that it meets its working capital needs through cash and funding from Mint UK Holdco LLC, funding which "is not contractually committed".⁷

HC-One: Southern Cross, the Cayman Islands, then Ohio

HC-One exists because of the last great care home failure. When Southern Cross collapsed in 2011, with 750 homes and 31,000 residents, after a sale-and-leaseback that left it paying upward-only rents it could no longer afford, 241 of its homes were taken over by a new company set up by its own landlords. That company was HC-One. It grew into the country's biggest operator, and its ownership retreated offshore. Its 2025 accounts, filed in June, state that the directors regard Skyfall LP, a limited partnership registered in the Cayman Islands, as the ultimate parent, with Skyfall GP Limited, also Cayman, as the controlling party; the group into which its results are consolidated has its registered office care of Intertrust SPV in Camana Bay, Grand Cayman. LaingBuisson lists the owner behind that structure as Safanad, a US investment firm.^9101421

Then the lender became the owner. Welltower's investor slides explain that in April 2021, "during the height of Covid-19 and Brexit uncertainty", it lent HC-One £660m secured on its property, with warrants and an equity stake attached, at an interest rate of 12.4%. In October 2025 it bought the whole portfolio for £1.2bn, repaid its own loan out of the price, and told shareholders it had "realised nearly a 14% unlevered IRR" on the loan along the way. HC-One's accounts confirm the sequence: a £635m facility fully redeemed on 24 October 2025, and a new note stating that from that date "the ultimate parent undertaking and controlling party of the company is Welltower OP LLC at 4500 Dorr Street, Toledo, Ohio". The single subsidiary whose accounts we read, HC-One Limited, runs more than 150 homes for 6,000 residents, filled 94% of its beds at an average fee of £1,232 a week, and still lost £5.1m.⁵⁹

Three-quarters of HC-One's residents are paid for by councils or the NHS, which is why its margins are the thinnest of the big chains. Welltower's own material calls the HC-One purchase "dilutive" to its 2026 earnings but "accretive" from 2027, which is a landlord's way of saying the returns are expected to rise.⁵¹⁰

Who owns the rest

The UK has about 466,000 registered beds for older people in roughly 10,100 independent homes, a market worth £27.3bn a year on LaingBuisson's latest count, of which £14.1bn, 55%, is paid privately. For-profit companies house 81% of residents, charities and housing associations 13%, and councils and the NHS 6%. There is no stock-market-listed care home operator; there are, increasingly, stock-market-listed landlords. The market is still fragmented, with the ten largest groups holding 18% of beds, but the top of the table is where ownership has changed most.¹⁰¹¹

Bed numbers are LaingBuisson's from October 2024, before the Welltower deals; ownership is as recorded in the CMA decisions, Companies House and company statements since. Care UK became the country's second-largest provider in December when it took over the running of the Aria and Danforth homes Welltower had bought, adding 12,000 beds. The CMA notes that Care UK's operating group has no ownership link to Welltower, but that the historic Care UK property companies do, having been acquired by the trust in October 2024, and that Care UK manages Welltower homes "under the terms of an umbrella master services agreement in return for a management fee". The split is stark in the filings: the Welltower-owned Care UK property company reported £580.5m of revenue and paid £34.5m in dividends up the chain in 2025, while the management company that actually employs the carers was bought by Care UK's own executives for £50 and describes itself as "ultimately controlled by the senior management". Other American landlords have followed: CareTrust REIT bought Care REIT plc and its 132 UK homes in May 2025; Belgium's Aedifica owns 119.^11023242530

Where the fee goes

The most thorough attempt to follow the money is still the Centre for Health and the Public Interest's 2019 study of more than 830 care home companies, which measured what it called leakage: profit before tax, rent, directors' pay and net interest, as a share of income. For small and medium firms it was £7 in every £100. For the 18 largest for-profit chains it was £15. Split by ownership among the 26 biggest providers, the eight not-for-profits leaked £8.60, the five private-equity-backed chains £9.06, and the 13 other for-profit groups £19.49 of every £100, the last group because so many had sold their buildings and rented them back. Seven of the 18 largest for-profits were spending between 15% and 32% of income on rent, £264m a year between them. The five largest private-equity-backed chains had borrowed £35,072 for every bed; their interest came to £102 per bed per week, 16% of an average fee, and 59% of what the 18 largest for-profits owed was to related companies, typically at 7% to 16%. Across the sector CHPI put the total at about £1.5bn a year, 10p in every pound.¹²¹³¹⁴

Who pays for that is not evenly shared. The CMA's 2017 market study found self-funders paid about £44,000 a year, around 40% more than councils paid for the same care, and that council fees were 5% to 10% below cost, a shortfall of £200m to £300m a year that private payers were in effect making up. The gap has not closed. Christie & Co's freedom of information survey of 174 councils put the average English council rate for 2025-26 at £774 a week for residential care and £996 for nursing; the average self-funder in England paid £1,300 and £1,519 respectively in January 2026, and in the South East £1,450 and £1,695. LaingBuisson calculates that 43% of older residents pay privately but supply more than half the revenue. The operators most exposed to council rates, HC-One and Bupa, have the lowest and falling margins; those focused on private payers, Barchester, Avery and Care UK, have the highest. That is why Welltower bought what it bought.^10151617

What the regulator found

The Welltower deals were not notified to the CMA; the regulator opened its inquiry itself in February 2026 after the facts became public. Its phase 1 decision of 7 May is the first time a UK competition authority has treated a landlord as a supplier of care. The CMA reasoned that Welltower's approval of budgets, control of capital spending and power to sack the operator in its RIDEA homes gave it "the ability and the incentive to influence the competitive offering", and that even its triple-net tenants "may not, in practice, act as independent competitors". It drew local catchments by drive time and set a threshold: wherever the combined share of beds reached 35%, it presumed harm. On that test it found a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition in 30 local areas across England and Scotland, mostly in nursing care.²²⁷

The remedy is modest next to the deal. To avoid a full inquiry Welltower agreed to sell ten homes outright, freehold or lease plus operations, and to change the operator at six more, with Apex barred from returning to them. The buyers are CGEN Care Group, a recent entrant that owns Stow Healthcare, taking five; Healthcare Ireland, taking three and the running of four others; Care UK, taking one; and the Orders of St John Care Trust, one. Four third parties objected during consultation that Care UK and Healthcare Ireland were not independent of Welltower, since both already run Welltower-owned homes and Healthcare Ireland has borrowed from a Welltower-controlled lender. The CMA accepted the sales anyway on 10 September, on the grounds that after completion Welltower would have no legal right to direct the divested homes. "It's crucial that older people and their families choosing care homes get the best care available at a reasonable price," said Sorcha O'Carroll, its senior director of mergers, when the remedies were proposed.¹³

The other regulator with a view is the Care Quality Commission, which since the Southern Cross collapse has run a market oversight scheme for providers that would be hard to replace. Its July 2026 list names 64 corporate providers, and Welltower appears on it in its own right. The scheme's job is to warn councils before a large provider fails; the CQC's guidance is blunt that it has no power to prevent a failure and that "the Government or CQC will not bail out failing providers".²⁰

The lesson the industry keeps relearning

Every structure in this story has a precedent that ended badly. Southern Cross was bought by Blackstone in 2004, sold its homes to landlords and leased them back with rents rising 2.5% a year regardless of income; when the 2008 crash cut occupancy and councils froze fees it could not pay and was broken up in 2011, with 31,000 residents transferred to new operators. Four Seasons was bought by Terra Firma in 2012 with bonds at 8.75% and 12.75% and loans from its own owners at 15%; by 2019 it owed about £500m, had 13% of the sector's debt against 5% of its beds, and went into administration. Its last 45 homes were sold in April 2025 to Omega, another American REIT, and leased to six operators. The 3.5% annual escalator in Welltower's Barchester lease is a gentler version of the Southern Cross rent, and it arrives at a time when councils' fee increases, 9% in England last year, are being driven by the minimum wage rather than by choice.^1416212223

The case for the new model is that it is less fragile than the old one. Welltower is an equity investor with tens of billions of dollars of assets, not a leveraged buyout fund; a landlord that shares operating profit has an interest in full, well-run homes; and the CQC notes that occupancy in the sector has recovered from 78% to 84% since the pandemic. The case against is the one the documents make for themselves: the operating companies that employ the carers now hold almost no assets, pay rent that rises by contract, and answer to owners whose returns are measured in Ohio. When the money runs short, the building is the last thing to lose value and the care is the first.⁷¹⁹

Why it matters this year

The pressure is arriving from both ends. Two-thirds of directors of adult social services told ADASS this spring that a provider had closed, ceased trading or handed back a contract in their area in the previous six months, with 3,964 people directly affected; half said residential capacity for older people was being switched towards self-funders. The Fair Pay Agreement for care workers takes effect in April 2028 with £500m behind it. A sector with 1.6 million posts, in which a care worker's median pay is £12 an hour, is being asked to fund 3.5% rent rises and low-double-digit returns from fees that councils cannot raise.¹⁸²⁸²⁹

Nobody in government has said anything about who should be allowed to own a care home. The Casey Commission's terms of reference do not mention providers or ownership; the CQC's scheme watches for failure but cannot prevent it; the CMA looked only at local competition, as its law requires. What the documents show is that the answer to "who owns the care homes" changed almost completely in twelve months, that the people now in control are a property trust in Toledo and a family trust in Manhattan, and that the only public process to examine any of it ended this month with the sale of ten homes.¹⁸⁹