Aged Care Property Loans Australia

Active Approved Provider status under the Aged Care Act is effectively a gate for traditional aged care finance. Most major banks and specialist lenders won't write a deal without it, and the deals I place almost universally start with confirming where the buyer sits on the AP timeline.

In practice, if you're an active Approved Provider we move straight into deal structuring. If you're mid-application, several lenders I work with will offer conditional approval against the AP being granted before settlement. Without active or imminent AP status, I'll usually recommend pausing the property side of the conversation and focusing on the application pathway first; you can book a free consultation to talk through your specific position.

Yes. Lenders look at your full ACQSC accreditation and compliance history as part of operator credit risk, and active sanctions or unresolved non-compliance findings will usually pause or block a finance approval until they're addressed.

Lender appetite varies a lot once you're past active sanctions. Major banks tend to want a clean three-year compliance history. Non-bank specialist lenders are more willing to write deals where past issues have been resolved and there's a clear remediation plan in place, and private capital can sometimes structure around active remediation work where the underlying business case is strong. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission publishes its accreditation register publicly, so the first thing I do is pull your facility's record to understand what lenders will see when they run their own checks.

Sometimes, yes. The most common structure I use here is a conditional approval, where the lender commits to terms subject to your Approved Provider application being granted before settlement. This works for buyers who are well-progressed in the AP process and have strong operator covenants behind them. Private capital can also fund the purchase while your AP application is finalised, with a refinance to a traditional lender once AP is granted; the trade-off is higher cost in the interim, and our commercial property loan refinance page covers the typical refinance pathway for clients in exactly this position.

Aged care LVRs typically sit at 60% - 75%, depending on deal type and operator profile. Going-concern freehold acquisitions with established operators tend to get the strongest LVRs, while leasehold operating businesses and acquisitions with significant capex programmes attract lower ratios.

Several factors push LVR up or down within that range:

• Approved Provider history: longer active AP status improves position.
• AN-ACC funding profile: at or above sector benchmarks lifts LVR.
• Compliance record: a clean ACQSC history is rewarded.
• Operator experience: a strong residential aged care track record helps.

Whether you're buying as an owner-occupier running the facility yourself, or as an investor leasing to an experienced operator, the lender pool and treatment shifts. Get in touch to talk through your specific deal.

Yes, but the structure depends heavily on the lender. Major banks generally have limited appetite for capex within a standard acquisition facility, preferring the capex to be funded separately or staged after settlement. Specialist non-bank lenders are more willing to structure capex within the main facility, often through staged drawdowns tied to project milestones.

Private capital is the most flexible on this. I've structured deals with bespoke staging that funds the purchase, the immediate compliance capex, and a working capital tranche for ongoing operational cashflow as the facility ramps up. Operators undertaking parallel capex programmes sometimes also use equipment finance for clinical fit-out, beds and major asset purchases.

Yes. Major banks typically cap interest-only at three years, non-bank specialist lenders extend up to five years, and private capital can sometimes structure full-term interest-only. Cashflow protection during the early ownership period is the main reason buyers structure this way, especially when capex or AN-ACC ramp-up is planned. The trade-off is higher overall interest cost across the loan term, which our commercial property loan types page covers in more detail across the different structures available.

EBITDARM is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation, rent and management fees. It's the headline operating profitability metric for aged care facilities, and the figure most lenders use as the starting point for serviceability assessment.

Normalised EBITDARM is what's left after lenders make their own adjustments to the vendor's reported figures, stripping out items like below-market director-of-care salaries, deferred capex, and non-recurring AN-ACC catch-up payments. The gap between vendor-reported and lender-normalised can easily be 20% to 30%, which directly affects how much you can borrow and at what rate.

The way the numbers are presented matters as much as the numbers themselves. I work through the vendor's figures with you, prepare a defensible normalisation, and submit both views side by side so the lender's serviceability calculation runs on the right figure. Our commercial property cash flow calculator lets you stress-test scenarios before submission.

Lenders look at three things: your current AN-ACC funding rate per resident, the trend over the last two to three years, and how you compare against sector benchmarks for similar facility types.

Stable or improving profiles at or above sector average get the best treatment. Below-sector or declining profiles attract a tighter LVR, or in some cases a different lender category altogether. The reason this matters: AN-ACC funding directly drives your facility's revenue, and lenders are essentially betting on your operator team to maintain or improve that funding profile over the loan term.

Sector benchmarks are published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which is what most lenders cross-reference against. I'll pull your facility's data and compare against the sector before we approach the market.

Aged care finance generally takes a bit longer than other commercial property categories because of the regulatory verification involved. Realistic timeframes vary by lender:

• Major banks: 8 to 12 weeks.
• Non-bank specialist lenders: 6 to 8 weeks.
• Private capital: 2 to 4 weeks.

The biggest accelerators are clean documentation, an active and well-documented AP status, and an existing relationship with one or more lenders I already know are writing your deal type. The biggest delays come from incomplete or ambiguous AN-ACC data, unresolved compliance items, and valuation lead times for specialist healthcare valuers. The detailed step-by-step is in the how to apply section above.

The exact list depends on the deal type and lender, but most aged care finance applications need a similar core package. On the property and business side, that means the sale contract, two to three years of vendor trading P&L, AN-ACC funding history and resident profile, Approved Provider and ACQSC accreditation documentation, and a recent specialist property valuation.

For you as the borrower, lenders will want to see your operator CV and clinical leadership experience, a personal financial statement, two years of personal tax returns, existing entity financials if you have other operations, and a forward business plan with projections.

I provide a tailored documentation checklist once we've had an initial conversation about your specific deal; book a free consultation to get started.