Olympic Hotel sells to accommodation operator

After a bumpy road Deans Property has sold Paddington’s Olympic Hotel to an accommodation group in lieu of viable offers from publicans.

The off-market transaction was orchestrated by Hamish Henderson and Justin Rose after unsuccessful campaigns by at least two pub specialist agencies that focused on the sale of the asset in its existing form.

Deans Property specialise mostly in the sale of non-pub buildings in the city fringe, and finding there was no surplus of buyers for the under-capitalised venue Deans cast a wider net around the asset, marketing the 29-room heritage building in Sydney’s prized Eastern Suburbs to their database of investors and alternative operators.

“We took a different approach, by selling the building, location and upside, not necessarily the busniess,” Deans Property senior sales manager Hamish Henderson told TheShout.

“That put a positive spin on the sale.

“We looked for somebody not specifically in pubs, with a view to either selling down the EGMs and converting the model, or a purchase based on the building and land and accommodation. In the end we got some good traction and via some tough negotiations everything fell into place.”

The unconditional sale price of $5.15 million was a good result considering some low offers in the early stages of the campaign, with more seasoned pub buyers having suggested its value lay around $4.5 million.

“There are currently lots of venues like this on the market, and it’s hard to establish value in a pub operating in [its] current state. The option of breaking it down, maybe selling the licence, acquiring an East Sydney building for this price, was more attractive in the end,” concluded Henderson.

Source: The Shout, 31 October 2013