It was announced late on Friday that the Belmore Hotel in the Canterbury-Bankstown LGA of Sydney was sold for approximately $50 million.
The gaming pub, ranked 33 in the NSW rankings, was sold off-market to former Sydney mayor and philanthropist Nelson Meers AO. The sale was negotiated by HTL Property directors, Dan Dragicevich and Andrew Jolliffe.
The pub was sold by Monarch Hotels, which has been divesting its portfolio over the last few years. Just in the last twelve months the group has sold the Banksia Hotel to Patrick Ryan, and the Lidcombe Hotel to Kent Walker. Monarch Hotels now only owns one pub, the Macquarie Hotel in the south-western Sydney suburb of Liverpool.
“The Belmore hotel has proven itself to be a perennial top 35 gaming asset, and the completion of this transaction aligns with our original divestment strategy. We congratulate Nelson Meers on the acquisition, and cannot think of a better custodian to take the asset forward,” stated Monarch Hotels operations manager James Smithers.
The Belmore Hotel, which includes 30 EGMs, only recently had a full renovation, and is ideally positioned within Belmore’s local retail precinct on the busy Burwood Road, and sits adjacent to the Belmore train station.
The sale caps off an incredible two-month period which has seen the divestment and purchase of several top-ranked gaming hotels in the greater Sydney area; assets like these are rarely divested, and it is more common to only see one or two sales of this calibre per year.
“2019 has been punctuated by some material sales of typically hard-to-dislodge leading gaming assets, with Allawah Hotel sold to Justin Hemmes for $33m, Raby Tavern at $35m, St George Tavern at $47m and now the Belmore Hotel at $50m, all in the last eight weeks,” stated Dragicevich.
“The market place for this hospitality and leisure indexed asset class is, on a national basis, delivering upon any fair measure wholly rewarding results to all stakeholders. The consistency and prosperity enjoyed warrants the focus it now firmly enjoys from alternative asset class investors, who are unapologetically indiscreet regarding their desire to place capital here,” added Jolliffe.
The sale of the Belmore Hotel is the second pub sale within the suburb in the last month, with Redcape selling the St George Hotel, one kilometre away, for $47.1 million to Michael Wiggins and Joanne Cassar.