Another Balmain pub hits the market

The popular Balmain pub Dick’s Hotel has been put on the market.

Dick's Hotel, located 89 Beattie Street, has one of the more popular beer gardens in the Balmain peninsula.

The owners have decided to sell because of the changing habits of the local area.

There was a time when Balmain had a thriving pub scene.

But that has changed with the demand for wine bars and intimate restaurants, resulting a drop in people popping over to the local pub.

As a result, the owners say its time to move on.

They are expecting the hotel will fetch a price of about $10 million.

All this is part of a trend hitting the pub scene.

Private investor Jon Adgemis' Eastern Property Alliance has decided to sell the Town Hall also in Balmain. It has been turned into a mixed-use site with Orange Theory gym and Massage Envy as the main tenants with the liquour licence remaining with the Booze Exchange bottle shop on the premises.

And then there is the 132-year-old Exchange Hotel on Beattie Street. It has also shut down after being sold in July 2017 to Mr Adgemis.

Ray White's Asia Pacific director Andrew Jolliffe, hotels such as Dick's in Balmain, and the market generally, are in generally in good condition.

"We are on record as saying the market for well positioned, reliably profitable, A grade hospitality stock is extremely strong and strengthening" Mr Jolliffe told the Sydney Morning Herald.

''And in Balmain, a noted pub suburb, the sale of the Dick's Hotel comes at a time when two other hotels, The Exchange and Town Hall, were recently converted to other uses.

"The validity of the east coast property market is underpinned by particularly strong commercial property fundamentals, and accordingly it is no surprise to us that we find ourselves at an inflection point in terms of the test for highest and best use for some assets within the category".

Leon Gettler - 24th April 2018