Rich lister Arthur Laundy cashes in on strong pub market with $13 million sale

BRW Rich Lister Arthur Laundy has sold off his Bateau Bay Hotel on the NSW Central Coast.

It fetched around $13 million after buying it two years ago for nearly $11 million.

The Bateau Bay Hotel, one of 19 NSW venues owned and managed by Laundy Hotels, was bought by a local north coast pub group.

"Pubs are going very strong. It's definitely a sellers market ... I am cashing in on the prices being paid at the present time," Laundy was cited as saying by the Australian Financial Review.

"If the right price came along, I would sell more [from my portfolio].” 

The sale was on a sub 10 per cent yield.

"The Bateau Bay Hotel been a solid business, but given we have a few projects on the go at present thought it was the right time to sell,” Laundy said.

The off-market deal was brokered by CBRE Hotels’ Daniel Dragicevich and Ben McDonald. 

The deal shows the strength of the NSW coastal pub market following the recent sales of the Swansea Hotel in Lake Macquarie and the Country Club in Shoal Bay, said McDonald.

"The sale of Bateau Bay, both in quantum of dollars and initial yield, adds weight to the flow of transactional activity in coastal pub markets at levels traditionally reserved for metropolitan assets," Dragicevich said.

Pubs in the region on the market include the Premier Hotel in Newcastle.

Other high-profile pub owners too are taking Laundy’s view on the current market. Geoff Dixon and John Singleton's Australian Pub Fund recently sold the Vic on the Park hotel in Enmore, Sydney, for about $20 million.

"It makes sense that if the Sydney market is closing in on 8 per cent cap rates, that hotels within two hours of the CBD in markets such as the Central Coast are selling at rates of 10 per cent or sharper,” Dragicevich said.