NEWS PROPERTY

Businessmen and long-time mates Geoff Dixon and John Singleton’s Australian Pub Fund has sold the Kinselas hotel at Sydney’s busy Taylor’s Square to long-time hoteliers, the Kospetas family’s Universal Hotel Group. It is the sixth asset the Australian Pub Fund, run by former Qantas chief executive Mr Dixon, Mr Singleton and their silent partner, Mark Carnegie, has sold in as many months. The combined sales have reaped the fund about $120 million and include the well-known Marlborough Hotel in Newtown, which was bought by Matt Moran and Bruce Solomon’s Solotel Group for about $34 million. No price was disclosed for Kinselas, which started operations in 1910, but market sources suggested it was about $23 million.

The historic Campaspe House boutique hotel in Woodend, Victoria will become the new home for the Archangel Michael Monastery for Nuns after the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Melbourne and Affiliated Regions acquired the site through CBRE’s Scott Callow. The sale price was confidential but sources have said the asking price for the property, which closed in late 2015, was about $3.5 million. The property was last acquired in 2008 for $4 million. The once-popular wedding location at 29 Goldies Lane comprises a 1927 English manor on a 7-hectare landscaped site in the Macedon Ranges, an hour from the Melbourne CBD. It has 16 courtyard rooms and a two-bedroom cottage. The country estate also features a fully serviced kitchen, a swimming pool, tennis court and a croquet lawn. Aside from the monastery, the diocese will use the property, which it bought in an off-market sale, for a women’s retreat centre.

Chinese buyers have picked up another Cairns CBD motel. The new-look Comfort Inn Cairns City on Lake St settled last Friday for $6 million. It is understood the business, formerly known as Discovery Cairns, will continue operating under the Comfort Inn brand. It comes after the Tropical Queenslander Motel, also on Lake St, was sold to a Chinese investment consortium for $6.3 million last September. Peter Connolly of Godwin Witten Realty, selling agent for the Comfort Inn and Tropical Queenslander, said savvy foreigners were seeing value for money in the Cairns CBD. “You cannot buy hotels like this so close to the city for that kind of money in Brisbane or the Gold Coast,” he said. “Hotel development is going off in town … there’s a real accommodation shortage.” Set on 3558sq m, the 52-room motel includes two pools and a restaurant. Mr Connolly said the new owners might develop the property “down the track”, adding the $6 million sale was a “great result” for the buyers. “It is very much a buyer’s market,” he said.

Fitzroy’s Builders Arms Hotel – a ritzy drinking and dining haunt that was, not too long ago, a grungy pub – has sold for a speculated price of more than $6 million. In operation since 1853, the Gertrude Street pub recently underwent a swank renovation. It is leased to restaurateur Andrew McConnell’s Ricky and Pinky, but was until recently occupied by another of his ventures, Moon Under Water. McConnell’s other hospitality venues include Cumulus Inc, Cutler and Co and Meatsmith. The site wasn’t marketed with a building size, land size, or details on the McConnell lease, including rent or lease term. TCI Property Consultants’ Jack Teneketzis launched the campaign to sell the pub less than a month ago. Earlier this year in the CBD, Swisse Vitamins heir Stephen Ring paid $8.1 million for another high-profile hospitality venue – the ex-Society restaurant at 23-29 Bourke Street. The red-brick building is mooted to become an eatery, with celebrity chef George Calombaris, reportedly on board.

There are murmurings around property traps that another Gold Coast timeshare resort, Tiki Village, might be heading down the sales path. If that happens, it will represent a second major ‘exit’ among the 80s-spawned properties that were the foundation of a vibrant timeshare industry in Australia’s tourism capital. The ‘time’s up’ call came for fellow timeshare property Surfers Royale in 2015 as age caught up with the 14-level tower, built by the late Ron McMaster. Its blue-chip site, on the beachfront in Northcliffe Tce, saw it sell for $22.37 million to the sons of Riyu Li, initiator of the three-tower Jewel project. The ring of the cash register might well have been enough to make Tiki timeshare owners sit up and take notice. It also appears to have focused the board of Broadbeach timeshare tower Voyager, which has been doing homework on the possibility of the building, which overlooks the ocean, being sold to a developer. Schoolies’ favourite Tiki, like Surfers Royale, is getting long in the tooth and sits on a handsome site on the riverfront in the heart of Surfers. It appears there is a belief that the site could be worth well north of $30 million. One observer describes the land as ‘a beautiful setting for a swanky hotel’. The eight-level Tiki, built by the late Dan Roberts at the start of the 80s, was the first project for architect Desmond Brooks when he started the DBI group. It’s been refurbished twice — firstly in 1994 and then again in 2012, when $2.2 million was spent on upgrades that included flat-screen TVs and Wi-Fi. The 4598sq m site, as well as the 69-unit timeshare building, has a leasehold single-level section and there’s also a 1133sq m lease on a marina that has been a pick-up, drop-off point for cruise boats. The building’s timeshare apartments are held through the Tiki Village Timeshare Trust, for which the Classic Holdings-linked Tiki Village International is the responsible entity. Classic is associated with Karim and Ramy Filo and its Classic Leisure arm manages Tiki Village — a job that in 2015-16 saw it paid $241,000 by Tiki Village International. The Filos have previous exposure to a timeshare property sell-off — they were running Surfers Royale when it was put on the sale block.

A Gladstone motel with 20 rooms and a pool is expected to sell for a bargain price at a fire sale. For six weeks commercial real estate agency Tourism Brokers has spruiked the Gladstone Motel to east coast buyers looking for a bargain in regional Queensland. While senior sales representative, and auctioneer John Warren said there were already some inquiries, he said he would be “foolish” to forecast what the highest bid could be. With the auction being a fire sale the motel is expected to go cheap, selling on land and building value rather than financial performance.

Family-owned hospitality operator the Vlandis Group has achieved the top pub sale of the year so far after offloading the Coolibah Hotel in Sydney’s Western Suburbs for about $40 million. The off-market deal, struck on a yield of about 8 per cent, topped the $37 million acquisition of the Tennyson Hotel in Mascot in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs by Merivale owner Justin Hemmes at auction in December last year. It also continues a run of capital city pubs selling at big premiums to their valuations or market expectations, driven by a big wave of capital being invested in the sector by private investors, pub groups and publicans. The Coolibah Hotel in Merrylands – one of three Western Sydney pubs owned by the Vlandis Group – was sold to another local family-run operator. Andrew Jolliffe, Asia Pacific director of the Ray White Hotels Group, negotiated the deal, but declined to identify the buyer. It’s a large pub measuring about 8500sq m and includes a number of bars and lounges, as well as a bistro, TAB betting room and bottle store. Property records show it last sold for $2.25 million in 1996. “The profile of the purchaser, much like our vendor, is one of an established and very well respected hotel group,” Mr Jolliffe said. He added that the pub deals “just keep rolling in” with no sign of the momentum slowing.

On The Beach Backpackers in Whitianga is the only waterfront hostel in town. You can’t miss it from a distance, a yellow and candy-blue creation perched along Whitianga’s picturesque waterfront. On The Beach Backpackers, opposite Buffalo Beach, has been providing the Coromandel township with no frills accommodation since the 1980s and now it is on the market. The lodge, which has been part of the Youth Hostel Association umbrella brand, was what Bayleys Hamilton commercial salesperson Josh Smith called “a stereotypical backpackers”.