TFE Hotels, owner of Adina, Travelodge, and Vibe properties, has opened up its hotel car parks to public through smart parking application Divvy Parking. Divvy is 40 percent owned by the NRMA.
December 22, 2016
Lantern Hotel Group will pay a special distribution of 2¢ per security on January 9 out of surplus funds. This follows the divestment of a number of properties.
December 13, 2016
Cairns Regional Council will take over Abbott St’s historic Courthouse Hotel to build a “world-class cultural precinct” in the heart of the city. But Mayor Bob Manning said the council had abandoned plans to compulsorily acquire the pub, purchasing it instead for $5.75 million. Cr Manning said the hotel would continue to operate until a masterplan was finalised next year.
December 9, 2016
Sam Arnaout’s Iris Capital has added to its fast-expanding Sydney pub portfolio with the acquisition of Darlinghurst’s Gaslight Inn for about $6 million. The multi-level pub at 278 Crown Street, just off Oxford Street, was offloaded by publican Stuart Browne in an off-market deal negotiated by Ray White Hotel’s Andrew Jolliffe and Gerry Quinlan of Manenti Quinlan and Associates. Iris Capital recently acquired Oxford Street establishment the Colombian Hotel in October for $18 million and followed that up by buying the Hungerford Hill boutique winery and vineyard in the Hunter Valley for more than $6 million. Wearing its development hat, Iris Capital recently acquired a four-block city site in Newcastle for $39 million with plans for a huge mixed-used project. Mr Jolliffe, who last week sold the Tennyson Hotel to Sydney pub tsar Justin Hemmes for an auction record of $37.05 million, said the sale of the freehold Gaslight Inn – the 14th pub sold in the inner-eastern suburbs by Ray White in recent years – underlined the strength of A-grade pub property. “The Sydney pub market is on fire at the moment,” he said. The Sydney pub market could end the year with a bang with high-profile businessmen John Singleton and Geoff Dixon offering the Marlborough Hotel in Sydney’s inner-west Newtown and Kinselas Hotel in Darlinghurst for sale, both through Ray White Hotels. Former Wallaby Bill Young paid $30 million for another well-known Sydney pub, The Five Dock Hotel, last week.
December 9, 2016
A Sydney-based financial advisory firm for wealthy Asian investors, iProsperity Group, has bought the Novotel Melbourne Glen Waverley, as the value of suburban hotels jumps. The group paid $73,666,666.66 for the hotel, another symbolic price after its recent acquisition of 333 Kent Street in Sydney for $88,888,888. Both 6 and 8 are considered lucky numbers in Chinese culture. The Novotel Melbourne Glen Waverley was sold by a private syndicate led by businessmen Phil Green and Greg Shand, who had owned the property for 20 years. It is currently leased to Accor Asia Pacific under a triple-net lease expiring in July 2018 and iProsperity could look to rebrand the property in coming years.
December 6, 2016
The Lone Pine Tavern at Rooty Hill is a fairly low key pub in Sydney’s far west, but the expected return from investing in it is nothing less than astonishing. The pub is about to be purchased for $26 million and the fund manager piecing together the deal is forecasting an 83.6 per cent return after the first year. Sitting opposite the Rooty Hill train station the single level hotel is nothing fancy, but it was totally refurbished and extended in 2009, comprising a public bar, a lounge bar, internal and external gaming areas with 28 machines, a large bistro, a beer garden and drive-through bottle shop. The fund manager – Bondi Asset Management – is including in the return a forecast first-year distribution of about 18 per cent followed up with 21.5 per cent in year two. The Feros Group currently owns and operates the pub and has agreed to sell it to the Bondi managed fund for $26 million, but an independent valuation of the hotel done by Knight Frank already values the hotel at $30.8 million giving the owner an immediate uplift.
December 6, 2016
Bar tsar and Merivale boss Justin Hemmes has paid the highest price yet secured in a public auction – $37.05 million – for The Tennyson Hotel in Sydney’s south. The auction, held by auctioneer Damien Cooley at Ray White’s head office in the Sydney CBD on Thursday, attracted 250 people including the who’s who of the pub industry, the Laundy and the Walker families But it was the owner of Ivy Bar and Establishment in Sydney who topped the bidding for the Paul Kelly-designed top 100 gaming hotel. JDA Hotels’ Feros family sold the two-level large-format 1423-square-metre Tennyson, the bones of which are illustrative of a Sidney Warden-designed inter-war functionalist structure. The property, on the corner of Botany Road and High Street in Mascot, is also close to the new Green Square residential precinct. The purchase comes as Merivale Group continues to expand its footprint. In August, the group paid $10 million for the Alexandria Hotel in Sydney’s inner-west. Last year Mr Hemmes snapped up the well-known Newport Arms Hotel in Pittwater on Sydney’s northern beaches for $50 million; the prized 11,000-square-metre waterfront land holding was on the market for the first time in 130 years. Mr Hemmes’ purchases are just some of the many transactions, worth about $500 million, to have hit the market in the past year. Evidence of the growing market, another smaller pub, a 9300-square-metre Wollongong hotel The Figtree, also sold at auction for $5.375 million on Thursday.
December 6, 2016
Proving they are still canny investors, long time mates and businessmen John Singleton and Geoff Dixon are selling two prized assets, the Marlborough Hotel in Sydney’s inner-west Newtown and Kinselas Hotel in Darlinghurst, to take advantage of the red-hot pub market. They plan to use the cash for other assets, if the prices stack up. It comes as more than $500 million of pubs have changed hands in the past year, led by the Lantern Group, which is selling down its pub portfolio as it shifts its business focus. One of the most recent was the purchase of the Five Dock hotel by former Wallaby Bill Young for $30 million through Ray White Hotels’ Asia-Pacific director Andrew Jolliffe. Mr Dixon and Mr Singleton’s assets are in the $300 million Australian Pub Fund, which the duo formed in 2010, together with investment banker Mark Carnegie. They had a plan to buy up to 20 under-performing pub assets in prime locations and overhaul them to increase their value. The two pubs are being sold through Mr Jolliffe, who said that at a time when the market has been particularly active, with record prices achieved across the eastern seaboard, the two Riversdale hotel assets are expected to be aggressively pursued given their prominent commercial land holdings, and robust cash flow businesses.
