Leeds care home developer LNT in £1.1bn CareTrust deal

Garforth-based LNT is selling 45 new care homes to US investor CareTrust for £1.1bn, with the first 24 – worth £576m – already changing hands.

One of the country’s biggest care home builders, the Leeds care home developer LNT, has struck a £1.1bn deal to sell 45 newly built homes to a major American investor. The buyer, US-listed CareTrust REIT, completed the first slice of the deal on 1 October, paying around £576m for 24 homes built over the past two years. The remaining 21 homes, still under construction, will follow in staggered sales worth about £504m. LNT, part of Lawrence Tomlinson’s Garforth-based group, will keep running the homes through its operating arm.

Why This Matters For Leeds

For Leeds, this is a reminder that one of the UK’s most significant care home businesses is run from a campus in Garforth. A £1.1bn deal with a New York-listed investor puts a Leeds-built operation on an international stage and validates years of expansion by Lawrence Tomlinson’s group. The capital it frees up should feed straight back into LNT’s construction pipeline, meaning more building work and the jobs that come with it, are anchored in the region. It is a landmark example of Leeds enterprise commanding serious global investment.

What the Leeds care home developer has agreed

Under the agreement, CareTrust is buying a pipeline of 45 purpose-built homes that LNT has developed, in a series of phased closings rather than one transaction. The homes will initially be leased to Crystal Care, LNT’s operating company, on long-term triple-net leases, before moving to a shared operating structure between the second and fourth years. CareTrust, a real estate investment trust listed in New York, described the homes as ‘brand new, purpose-built, private pay homes serving a market with a genuine shortage of modern care beds’. LNT builds around 30 care homes a year and says it has delivered more than 250 to date, making it one of the largest developers of elderly care accommodation in the UK. Its construction arm is reckoned to account for a fifth or more of all new care homes built nationally.

“This transaction was never simply about raising capital. We were keen to carefully choose a strategic partner.”

— Lawrence Tomlinson, Founder, LNT

A landmark deal built in Leeds

The deal is a notable moment for the Leeds care home developer and for Lawrence Tomlinson, the Yorkshire entrepreneur whose LNT Group spans care construction, the Ideal Care Homes operator, care-management software and even the Ginetta sports car marque, all run from a single campus in Garforth. For CareTrust, the agreement is one of its largest moves into the UK; chief executive Dave Sedgwick called LNT ‘one of one’, praising its ‘vertical integration, standardization and obsession with detail’. The capital raised is expected to help fund the next wave of LNT’s building programme.