Home/Lease to a care provider
For landlords and property owners
Letting a property to a care provider.
Maine Property Solutions is a property company. We find, prepare and manage buildings — we do not provide care, support or supervision, and we are not registered with CQC or Ofsted. Care and support in any property we manage is provided by the registered provider, not by us.
We are looking for our first placement in this sector. Tell us the specification and we will look for it.
If you own a property and a care provider wants it, the terms on offer vary enormously by sector — from twenty-year full repairing leases to placements that end on a decision rather than a notice period. This page sets out what actually differs.
Before anything else
Three things that decide whether this works at all
Your lender and your freeholder
A mortgage or a lease above you can prohibit the use outright, whatever a provider is willing to pay. Written consent naming the actual use is the first thing to establish, not the last.
Planning and licensing
Use class, Article 4 designations and HMO licensing all bite here, and in children's homes planning permission gates the registration itself. A building that cannot reach the planning position it needs cannot be used, however suitable it looks.
The certificates
Fire risk assessment, gas safety at intervals of no more than twelve months, fixed wiring inspected at least every five years, alarms and furniture fire safety. None of these are softened by the presence of a care provider, and several sectors want them evidenced before an opportunity, not after.
The sectors
Fourteen different tenants, fourteen different leases
The lease shape is the part landlords most often assume is standard, and it is the part that varies most. Read the sector before reading the offer.
The line, drawn plainly
What we can do, and what we cannot
What we can do
- Find property against a written specification — size, layout, location, adaptation, tenure and the compliance set the building has to carry.
- Prepare it: works, furnishing, certificates and the paperwork a provider or a commissioner will want to see before it takes the building on.
- Manage the building afterwards, if that is what is wanted — repairs, contractors, certificate renewals and the landlord side of the relationship.
- Put the proposed terms, the works and the timetable in front of you in writing before anything is committed.
What we do not do
- We do not provide care, support or supervision, of any kind, to anyone.
- We are not registered with CQC and we are not registered with Ofsted. A landlord letting a building to a care provider is carrying on neither regulated activity and has nothing to register.
- We do not employ, supply or manage care or support staff, and we make no claim about the vetting of anyone else's.
- We hold no framework place, no contract and no position on any supplier list with any council, health body or government department.
- We hold no care-sector placement anywhere. Maine Property Solutions operates two properties, both in Coventry, and has no managed instruction in any sector.
One that catches people out
Exempt accommodation is not something a private landlord can be
Exempt accommodation — the housing benefit category that carries this part of the market — must be provided by a county council, a housing association, a registered charity or a voluntary organisation. Maine Property Solutions is a private limited company and is none of those, so we can never hold that status. What we can do is let a building TO an organisation that does. Anyone implying otherwise, including us, would be wrong.
The word exempt in exempt accommodation refers to housing benefit, not to licensing, and the two are routinely confused. Being exempt accommodation does not exempt a building from HMO licensing. Mandatory licensing is triggered by five or more people in two or more households; what kind of occupancy agreement people hold makes no difference to whether a building is an HMO; and the single care setting that regulations lift out of the HMO definition is a registered care home, which is not what any of this is. Additional and selective licensing schemes can catch a property below the mandatory threshold as well.
Your Questions
Questions we get asked
Not covered here? Tell us the specification and we will answer for your situation.
Who would my tenant be?
A care provider, a charity, a housing association or in some sectors a council. Which one depends on the sector, and the sector decides almost everything else about the letting as well.
Is this safer than a normal letting?
It is different, not automatically safer. Some sectors offer long full repairing and insuring leases with the void risk on the tenant. Others end on an administrative decision with no notice period. The lease shape varies more across these fourteen sectors than it does across the whole of ordinary residential letting.
Would my property need an HMO licence?
Quite possibly. Being exempt accommodation does not exempt a building from HMO licensing — the word exempt there refers to housing benefit, not to licensing. Mandatory licensing is triggered by five or more people in two or more households, and additional or selective licensing can catch a property below that.
Do you provide the care?
No. We do not provide care, support or supervision and we are not registered with CQC or Ofsted. Care and support in any property we manage is provided by the registered provider, not by us.
Have you done this before?
No. Maine Property Solutions operates two properties, both in Coventry, and holds no care-sector placement anywhere. We are looking for our first placement in this sector, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
What would you charge?
Fees are agreed per instruction in writing. There is no fee quoted on this page because the work varies with the sector, the building and the specification.