Local publican family snaps up Manly's Brookvale Hotel for $40m
The booming pub sector has ended the year with one more blockbuster deal, after the Kelly family secured a $40 million-plus buyer for its long held Brookvale Hotel near Manly on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
Standing on a 2700 sq m site on Pittwater Road between the Westfield Warringah Mall and Brookvale Oval the gaming hotel was discretely sold to another family-owned operator, Irvin Hotel Group, which owns 13 venues including the nearby Time & Tide Hotel in Dee Why.
The Kelly family, which owns several landmark Sydney hotels, including the Doncaster in Kensington, had owned and operated the Brookvale Hotel for almost 25 years having paid $4.6 million for it in 1998.
While the sale price remains confidential it is understood the hotel sold in line with its asking price which was above $40 million.
Offering development potential via a new 30-metre height limit as part of the new Brookvale Structure Plan Precinct, the hotel also came with 29 electronic gaming machines and 40 onsite car spaces.
In 2019, the Kelly family carved off a 3456 sq m chunk of the original hotel site and sold it with a permit for a five-story apartment building (subsequently completed) to a developer for about $15 million.
The sale caps a huge year for the pub sector, where a record $2.2 billion-plus of assets are expected to have changed hands as investors have piled into the inflation-busting, recession-proof asset class.
Selling agents John Musca and Ben McDonald from JLL, who are on the hunt for a $175 million buyer for The Oaks Hotel in Neutral Bay, handled the invitation-only sales process for the Brookvale Hotel.
“Hotels commanding a virtual monopolistic trading position in strong retail locations will always be highly sought after and Brookvale is no exception,” Mr Musca said.
Pubs on Sydney’s Northern Beaches are among the most coveted in the country and values have soared in the past few years.
Notable sales include Manly’s Hotel Steyne, which The Australian Financial Review Rich Lister Sam Arnaout acquired in 2019 for $65 million for his Iris Capital Hospitality empire.
Two years later Iris Capital paid about $60 million for Manly’s Ivanhoe Hotel.
Looking to cash in on this appetite for hospitality premises around Manly, Rich Lister Robert Magid has put Manly Wharf on the market, asking $80 million.
The incoming owners of the Brookvale Hotel, the Irvin family own 13 hotels in NSW and Queensland. Following a career in the pharmacy industry, Paul Irvin bought his first pub in 1970, before handing the reins of the Irvin Hotel Group to his son Joe.
