Australian aged care businesses sell for 3x to 8x EBITDA, but that range tells you almost nothing useful by itself. A home care business with 80 stable Commonwealth packages and low staff turnover is a very different asset from a 60-bed residential facility running at 82% occupancy with a warning letter from the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission sitting on the desk. Both are “aged care businesses.” They’re valued completely differently — and for good reason.
If you’re thinking about selling, here’s how the numbers actually work.
Two Very Different Industries Under One Label
The first thing to understand is that “aged care” covers at least two structurally distinct business models, and they attract different buyers at different multiples.
Home care providers manage Commonwealth Home Care Packages — funded allocations that allow elderly Australians to receive support in their own homes. The business model is essentially a recurring-fee service business: you hold a roster of approved packages, you match them with care workers, and you earn a management fee on each package. Revenue is relatively predictable; the main variables are how full your package book is, how much you spend on workforce, and how efficiently you administer the whole thing.
Residential aged care is a different beast. You’re running a physical facility — a nursing home, in plain language — with significant fixed infrastructure, permanent nursing staff, and the full weight of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission looking over your shoulder. Revenue depends on bed occupancy and the AN-ACC (Australian National Aged Care Classification) funding your residents attract. Costs are dominated by workforce, which in this sector means registered nurses, enrolled nurses, and personal care workers — a labour pool that is perpetually undersupplied.
Most business owners have one or the other. Some have both. The valuation methodology and the buyer pool differ significantly between them.
What Multiples Actually Look Like
Working ranges for the current Australian market (2025–26):
Home care businesses:
- Small operator (under 50 packages, owner-operated): 2x to 3x EBITDA
- Mid-size (50–200 packages, employed managers): 3x to 5x EBITDA
- Larger, systemised operator (200+ packages, clean compliance record): 4x to 6x EBITDA
Residential aged care:
- Stressed or under-occupied facility (below 88%): asset value, not earnings multiple
- Well-occupied facility (90%+) with clean compliance: 5x to 7x EBITDA
- Premium facility — strong occupancy, modern building, ACQSC green record, good local reputation: 6x to 8x EBITDA
One rule of thumb worth filing away: a well-run home care business should produce EBITDA of roughly 10–15% of revenue. A residential facility needs to be running at 90% occupancy or above before the maths get comfortable. Below that, you’re covering fixed costs with very little left over — and buyers know it.
What Moves Your Multiple Up or Down
For home care, the package book is everything. Buyers are buying a book of recurring Commonwealth-funded revenue. The questions they ask are: how stable is the package allocation? What’s the churn rate on clients? How many are self-managed vs managed directly? Is the workforce permanent or predominantly casual agency labour? A business where 70% of packages are fully funded, clients have been with you for three or more years, and you’ve never had an unplanned compliance event is worth a meaningful premium over one with high turnover and a mixed contractor workforce.
For residential, occupancy is the gating factor. Full stop. Buyers underwrite based on your trailing occupancy, not your optimistic projection. A 60-bed facility at 95% occupancy with clean accounts is worth acquiring. A 60-bed facility at 84% occupancy with a notice of non-compliance in its regulatory history will struggle to attract earnest offers from serious buyers — and the ones who do come will price the risk accordingly.
Other factors that materially affect multiples in both sectors:
- Workforce stability. The 2023 Fair Work Commission decision awarding 15% pay increases to aged care workers was significant — it lifted labour costs sector-wide and compressed margins. Businesses that managed the transition well (renegotiated employment arrangements, retained key staff, updated their pricing) came through in better shape. Those that didn’t are carrying lower margins into any sale process.
- Compliance record. One compliance notice can shave a full turn off your multiple. Two puts you in distressed-asset territory. Buyers don’t just look at your current status — they dig into your audit history going back three to five years. A clean, consistent compliance record is worth protecting.
- Technology and systems. A home care business running on modern care management software with clean data exports is materially easier to integrate than one running on spreadsheets and tribal knowledge. Buyers price integration risk.
- Owner dependency. Same issue as every professional services business. If you’re the one managing the ACQSC relationships, handling the complex client situations, and holding the key referral partnerships — that’s a risk a buyer has to price. If you’ve got a strong operations manager who can run the business without you, you’re in a better position.
The AN-ACC Transition and What It Did to Valuations
If you operate residential aged care, you’ll know that October 2022 brought the biggest funding change in a generation: ACFI (Aged Care Funding Instrument) was replaced by AN-ACC (Australian National Aged Care Classification). The practical impact was significant — some facilities that had been optimising their ACFI assessments found their revenue streams adjusted sharply, while others with genuinely complex resident cohorts found themselves better funded under the new model.
From a valuation perspective, the transition created a period of compressed multiples as buyers tried to get comfortable with the new funding model. That has largely stabilised, but any historical financial analysis needs to clearly account for the AN-ACC transition. If your accounts show a revenue drop in 2022–23, make sure you can explain why and demonstrate what the normalised run-rate looks like under the current model. Buyers will ask.
Who’s Buying Aged Care Businesses Right Now
The buyer market is narrower than in some other industries — but the buyers who are active are serious operators with real capital.
The national and PE-backed operators — Opal Healthcare, Regis Healthcare, Arcare, Bolton Clarke, and similar groups — are selectively acquiring residential facilities that fit their geographic footprint and quality profile. They’re not chasing distressed assets; they’re looking for compliant, well-occupied facilities they can integrate with minimal remediation work.
For home care, the buyer pool is broader. National groups, smaller regional operators looking to scale their package book, and occasionally private investors who understand the sector. I spoke with an advisory firm recently that handled a home care business sale in regional Queensland — the vendor had 140 packages, stable client relationships, and an employed team that didn’t depend on the owner. Three serious bidders. Sold at 4.5x EBITDA in a five-month process. The owner had done the preparation work two years before the sale (which is more than most do) — clean accounts, documented procedures, no compliance flags. That preparation was worth real money.
The buyers who are less interested: private equity generalists without sector experience, and anyone looking for a passive investment in residential care. The regulatory obligations are too specific for an owner who doesn’t understand the sector.
The New Aged Care Act — What It Means for Sellers
The Aged Care Act 2024, which took effect in July 2024, introduced a strengthened Statement of Rights for older people in care, new provider registration requirements, and a revised compliance and sanctions framework. The intent was to implement the Royal Commission’s recommendations about accountability and quality.
For sellers, the practical implication is that due diligence under the new framework is more rigorous than it was pre-2022. Buyers will want to see your provider registration status, your response to any ACQSC assessment visits, evidence of your governance arrangements, and documentation of your incident management processes. If any of this is patchy, it slows a deal down — or provides buyers a basis to renegotiate price.
The best preparation is treating your compliance obligations as commercial assets, not administrative obligations. A clean regulatory track record over three years is worth more at the sale table than any financial normalisation exercise.
What to Do Before You Start a Sale Process
If you’re two to three years out from selling, the sequence that produces the best outcomes:
- Get three years of clean, normalised accounts prepared with a clear EBITDA bridge
- If residential: run a push on occupancy. Every additional bed filled at 90%+ occupancy drops almost entirely to the bottom line
- Reduce owner dependency — document your referral relationships, introduce your operations manager to key stakeholders, make sure you’re not the only person who can run the business
- Resolve any outstanding compliance matters. Don’t go to market with open ACQSC items
- Understand your workforce cost structure and be able to demonstrate how it’s changed post-2023 wage decision
If you’re closer to 12 months out, preparing your business for sale covers the general checklist — the aged-care-specific items above sit alongside it, not instead of it.
On tax: selling an aged care business can be structured as an asset sale or a share sale, and the CGT implications differ materially. Tax on selling a business in Australia covers the small business CGT concessions — they apply to aged care providers just as they do to any SME, subject to the usual eligibility tests.
If you want to understand how buyers will look at your numbers, what buyers look for when buying a business covers the general framework. In aged care specifically, compliance history and workforce stability tend to sit above EBITDA on the buyer’s checklist.
There’s also meaningful overlap with the NDIS sector — many care operators run both aged care and NDIS services. If you’re in that position, how much is my NDIS business worth is worth reading alongside this.
Getting a Real Number
A useful starting point: take your normalised EBITDA (three-year average, with owner salary add-backs, one-off costs removed, and a market-rate management replacement cost deducted). Apply the range relevant to your business type and occupancy/package fill rate. That gives you a working range, not a certified valuation.
If the number matters — and if you’re thinking about a sale process, it matters — get an independent formal valuation from an advisor with sector experience. The aged care market is specific enough that a generic business valuer without care sector knowledge will produce a number that experienced buyers will immediately challenge.
If you want a fast directional sense of where you might land, our valuation calculator is a useful starting point. For something more substantive, get in touch and we can talk through your specific situation.
The sector has changed significantly since 2020. The buyers are disciplined, the regulatory environment is tighter, and the workforce cost story is different than it was. But for providers who have run their operations well and done the preparation work, there is genuine appetite from serious acquirers — and the multiples for quality assets remain strong.