Patron Capital Partners has sold its UK care home business to US-listed specialist Health Care REIT for £153m (€190m) and formed a partnership to invest another £200m in the sector.

Health Care REIT, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has been expanding outside its domestic market. The purchase of Patron Capital’s Gracewell Healthcare, a business with 11 care homes, comes soon after it agreed to acquire Canadian company HealthLease Properties Real Estate Investment Trust.

Its subsidiary Sunrise Senior Living will acquire the management company of Gracewell Healthcare.

European opportunistic fund manager Patron Capital began investing in the portfolio of “purpose-built, luxury private-pay” senior housing in 2010. The Gracewell portfolio now containeds 767 units, mostly in southern England.

Following the deal, Patron said it would continue working with Health Care REIT, Sunrise Senior Living and the founders of Gracewell – Tim Street and Daniel Kay — in a new partnership, aiming to invest in at least five properties a year.

Patron Capital managing director Keith Breslauer said: “It is an industry we believe in and are committed to; Patron’s strategy is to invest a further £200m in this asset class, in the care homes business, the healthcare industry in general, as well as our specialty care business, Badby Park.”

The partnership had started with the parties working together to redevelop one of the housing communities in the portfolio.

There were 11 more homes with 812 units in the development pipeline, Patron said, with most of these in Greater London and southern England.

Patron Capital Partners invests opportunistically in niche sectors in many European countries.

In May, it bought a loan portfolio from Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), and separately formed a €400m joint venture with Meridia Capital in order to invest in property in Spain, to profit from the country’s economic recovery.

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