Either you own a care home or you are considering that investment, and at some point, someone has mentioned to you that you would need to manage the property. Understanding the concept of managing the property sounds easy. But, managing property in a care home is different from managing a flat or office. Many property owners realize that the hard way, when they receive a property management service invoice after services had been rendered.
The first step to managing property is to realize that a care home never stops. First, it operates day and night, every day of the year, with people who cannot leave at will. Thus, there is a constant strain on the property. Also, the care home requires more intensive and constant use and functionality of the lift, the kitchen and the laundry compared to a typical home and a flat. Managing property of a care home is essentially managing a high use property that needs to be operational and safe in a functional and reliant manner.
You must perform boiler maintenance regularly, and what is smarter; plan maintenance, or wait for things to break down? The latter is far more expensive, as having to replace a broken boiler with an emergency service in the middle of the winter will likely cost you even more than doing it at a time of our choosing. You have to be proceed, not panic. Walk around, look for problems, take notes, make appointments. It’s as simple as that. Floor tiles, doors, HVAC systems, elevator, fire safety; all of these take time and/or money to replace. You won’t have an idea how much money or time it will take to replace any of these things unless you’ve done along the way. Plan: look everything, document the condition, book an appointment.
Second, compliance in a care home isn’t optional and isn’t easily met. Care homes must meet fire safety requirements. Following Grenfell, there is more scrutiny on care homes, so you will need proof of current fire doors, compartmentation, and fire risk assessments, etc. This doesn’t even cover gas safety, electrical testing, LOLER and lifting equipment checks, legionella, and asbestos in older buildings. You can’t let any of this slide, because the CQC inspector may show up at any time and you’ll need the proper documentation to prove you’ve been addressing safety concerns. This is a major part of managing the property, and you are better off giving one person total responsibility rather than letting it drift.
There is also the financial side, which owners occasionally fail to recognize as a factor of property management. How your building is maintained connects directly to the worth of the property. The value of a care home is largely determined by the potential earnings, and a fatigued, neglected building is not only harder to let, but also to charge decent fees, and is far more likely to receive a poor inspection that will deter self-funders. The money you spend to keep the building in good order is not really a cost in the way a one-off repair is. It protects the value of the property, and the owners that treat it that way tend to have a business in ten years time.
This indicates that managing a care home property is a significant job that exists alongside the delivery of care, not beneath it. You can greatly benefit from help, as most care home owners bring in support for the parts of the home they manage. Such support can include a managing agent, a maintenance contractor, or a compliance service. What you cannot do, is hope the building looks after itself in the background, because it won’t. A care home is the last kind of building where you want to find this out the hard way. Managing a care home is difficult, and most people would naturally want to care for the residents. However, the property side of the business is not something you need to be worried about as long as you know your building as well as you know your residents.