The lender funded more than £150 million of new UK care beds in 2024 and opened nine new care homes.
Puma Property Finance provided loans for the development of more than £150 million of care homes across the UK last year. In doing so, it has added more than 400 new care beds in Surrey, Devon, Oxfordshire, Leicestershire and Essex.
The beds are in addition to the nine new care homes that opened during the year of which Puma funded the development. This delivered a further 600 plus beds in various locations including Shropshire, Greater Manchester, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, West Sussex, Kent, and Hampshire.
“The UK care home industry… relies heavily on new build developments to keep up with the ever-growing demand and ageing supply,” said Tony Throp, director and head of healthcare at Puma Property Finance.
“From our experience, larger lenders and mainstream banks typically focus on refinancing existing care homes, instead of funding new-build developments, because, by their very nature, there can be potential development risk,” he continued.
A strong outlook
Between the beds opened and those currently under construction, Puma supported the development of more than 1,000 beds last year which makes up almost a quarter of new beds added to the UK care home market according to Savills UK.
Overall, Puma says that it has now funded more than £665 million of care homes across 39 schemes and approximately 2,800 care beds since 2018.
Demand is driven by the fact that the UK’s over-65s population is set to reach 15.3 million by 2030 and 18.8 million by 2050, according to Knight Frank.
Valued at £26 billion a year according to research from LaingBuisson, Throp characterises the outlook for the UK care home industry as “strong”.
