Australia’s oldest pub brewery sold for $20m (2024)

Pub sales have reached close to $1 billion so far this year, with major players including veteran Arthur Laundy and the Universal Hotels group expanding their footprints across the sector.

The usually quieter Melbourne market has also been active, indicating that investors, as well as operators, are coming back to the industry.

In one of the latest deals, Laundy outlaid about $20 million for the Lord Nelson, in Sydney’s Rocks district. The deal includes a brewery that will complement his Marsden Park brewery and pub complex in Sydney’s west. The Lord Nelson Hotel is Sydney’s oldest continually licensed hotel, and believed to be the oldest pub brewery in the country

Blair Hayden, who with his business partners have owned the pub since 1986, undertook a large-scale restoration of the sandstone building to bring it back to its former glory, and has operated it since.

JLL hotel and hospitality managing director Ben McDonald and senior vice-president Kate MacDonald worked closely with both parties to finalise the deal.

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“With publicans having a greater focus on earnings, given the current lending environment and respective debt covenants, high cashflow leasehold assets are drawing greater interest from savvy hoteliers seeking to bolster their portfolio returns,” McDonald said.

Laundy Hotels will get the keys to the Lord Nelson in about eight weeks. Until then, it will be business as usual.

“This sale adds weight to a growing number of transaction announcements for JLL’s niche pubs platform, which facilitated $530 million of asset sales through the first half of 2024,” MacDonald said.

In another deal, the Kospetas family’s Universal Hotels has outlaid about $17 million to buy the Evening Star pub, in Surry Hills, expanding its holdings to 17 venues across NSW, with a high concentration in Sydney’s CBD and CBD fringe.

To help fund the purchase, Universal sold the leasehold of The Mill, in Bondi Junction, that sits within the TWT Property Group’s mixed-use residential project in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. The deal was also advised on by JLL’s Ben McDonald and Kate MacDonald.

“The location and demographic of the Evening Star have a strong synergy with our customer base, and we feel that there is great potential for us to activate our resources and improve the hotel’s offerings,” chief executive Harris Kospetas said.

Well versed in the precinct and its people, Universal will reposition the pub to better align with its potential. “Our plans initially will be to take over and revamp the hotel to appeal more to locals, young professionals and commuters around the Central Station precinct, as well as focusing on a new and exciting South-East Asian-inspired food and co*cktail concept,” Kospetas said.

The limited availability of pubs for sale in Sydney’s east for less than $10 million was also a key motivating factor behind the acquisition, and closely follows JLL’s $12 million sale of the Unicorn Hotel on Oxford Street, Paddington.

The Feros group’s JDA Hotels paid about $10 million for the Unicorn, well known locally as the Fringe Bar for its Monday night comedy acts.

HTL Property, which unconditionally exchanged $588 million worth of pubs for the first six months to June 30, said there has been a noticeable uptick in demand for pubs. HTL recently sold the Light Brigade pub in Oxford Street, Woollahra, to Stuart Laundy for $20 million.

The agency, led by managing director Andrew Jolliffe, also sold the Area Hotel in Griffith for Jim Knox at $30 million, and the Captain Cook for Warren Livingstone to Kent Walker at $35 million.

Pubs and pokies billionaire Bruce Mathieson also sold the well-known Captain Cook Hotel, opposite the Sydney Football Stadium in Paddington, for $6 million – less than half of what he paid for it in December 2022. The discount was due to the hotel not including the poker machines in the sale.

In Melbourne, JLL are selling the freehold of South Melbourne’s Bells Hotel via agents Will Connolly and Lachlan Persley.

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“The offering of Bells Hotel presents an exciting opportunity to be part of the recent resurgence of Melbourne’s pub market, traditionally seen as one of the most tightly held, with purchasers having the opportunity to take the reins of a multi-million dollar transformation to include the venue’s ‘Main Hall’ events space,” Connolly said.

Connolly, with Savills pubs expert Nick Lower, have also been appointed to market one of Melbourne’s well-known waterfront hotels, The Bridge Hotel, Mordialloc. It sits on a 6961 square metre site in the beachside suburb of Mordialloc.

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