Burgess Rawson says buyers are back for fast food and childcare: church leases Noosa’s Halse Lodge
Hungry buyers are back for fast food and childcare assets while the Anglican Church finds a tenant for Halse Lodge in Noosa. WELCOME TO HOT PROPERTY
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Seven Queensland properties sold for almost $30m at Burgess Rawson’s latest portfolio auction as hungry buyers returned with fast food and inner city sales the major highlights.
The Brisbane auction saw seven successful sales from eight properties offered which realised a blended yield of 5.69 per cent.
The KFC at Ayr in northern Queensland received 66 bids before selling for $3.105m and achieving a tight yield of 4.75 per cent while the Chatterbox Early Learning Centre at 23 Tillot St, Dutton Park, sold for $5.38m reflecting a yield of 4.84 per cent.
Burgess Rawson partner Andrew Havig said the Dutton Park result was the sharpest yield achieved for a Queensland childcare centre above $5m, in the past 12 months.
“The confidence is back. We had the most registered bidders at an auction than we’ve had for the past three months,” he said.
In Caboolture, a property leased to EG Group and Oporto sold for $7.985m and a Carl’s Jr also in Caboolture sold for $5.105m.
Mr Havig said buyers were attracted to “safe havens” and with the Dutton Park property the long lease, quality tenant and location played a part.
“Also people are getting more familiar with the sector as well and we don’t see that slowing down any time soon.” he said.
“With fast food the attraction is those prime site, on highways, main road and good tenants – all of those fundamentals. But we are just seeing that volume of buyers coming back which is nice.”
Overall, the three-day event held in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane had 31 properties sell for $81.01m with a 91 per cent success rate.
Backpacker haven
A Queensland hotel management group has secured the leasehold of its first backpackers hostel in a renowned property at Noosa on the Sunshine Coast.
Collective Hotel Management Group has the lease on Halse Lodge – the longest continuously operating guesthouse in South East Queensland, which has been in the Anglican Church of Southern Queensland’s hands for more than six decades.
The lodge sits on an 8000sq m site in 2 Halse Lane, Noosa, and is 150m from one of Australia’s premier beach retail strips, Hastings St.
In 2020 the church sought expressions of interest on the site from potential partners and deal was struck earlier this year between CHM Group managing director Michael Tozer and Knight Frank’s Blake Goddard and Matt Barker for an undisclosed annual sum.
Mr Tozer is currently overseas and CHM co-founder partner Robert McDonald said they are investing a “significant amount of funds” to elevate the property that was previously run as a backpacker hostel by Ecolodge.
“This is our first backpacker offering and it’s largely a refresh and continuation of the previous use,” he said.
“We participated in the original campaign. We an interest then and continued to express an interest. We needed to meet the requirements of the church which ultimately we did.
“We’re really happy to be partnering with the church. It’s a magnificent site and we’re really excited about it.”
Halse Lodge was built in the 1920s and its tourism links go back to the 1880s. There were also a number of other buildings on the site.
CHM is trading through the refurb and plans to offer about 100 beds when it officially relaunches Halse Lodge by the end of the year.
Mr Goddard said the campaign generated more than 250 inquiries and 36 inspections.
“There were multiple purchase offers put to us but the owner was adamant that they wanted to keep it as a multi-generational investment for the church,” he said.
“In the end we were able to extract the best outcome for the owners being a long-term lease over the property to a well-established accommodation provider.”
Harmony on song
A Queensland childcare business will open another 25 centres over the next three years and is planning an expansion into Sydney.
Established in 2016, Harmony Early Education currently has 16 early centres across South East Queensland and northern NSW.
A further three centres were either recently opened or currently under construction at Bulimba and Griffin in Brisbane and Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast.
Based in the northern Gold Coast, the company was Harmony Early Learning Journey and was rebranded as Harmony Early Education in March.
Chief executive Laurie Begni said the brand refresh was “incredibly exciting and timely”, given Harmony had three new centres under construction as well as a robust development and acquisition pipeline.
“As a leading educator, we recognised it was time to update our name to represent our focus on the educational journey, especially since we are planning to enter new markets including Sydney, in the near future,” he said.
“This brand refresh aligns with the fact that Harmony has always been dedicated to a holistic
approach to children’s early learning and development and we look forward to being able to
introduce the Harmony way to more regions across Australia.
“We plan to develop another 15 sites over three years, and looking to acquire 10 existing services to renovate and redecorate.”
Harmony’s model is a combination of development as owner-occupiers and also as tenants for other developers and landlords.
Of Harmony’s three new centres, the property at 31 Godwin St, Bulimba is owned by an institutional childcare property owner; the site at lot 1, Grays Rd, Griffin, is owned and will be occupied by Harmony and a new property at 1858-1860 Gold Coast Highway, Burleigh Heads, was sold to a Brisbane family as an investment, upon completion.
They have also recently opened a centre at 7 Banjo St, West Burleigh, that was leased by them from the owners.
The private company was established by the founders of Bambini Early Childhood Development the Guifre family in 2016 who sold their original business to Affinity Education Group.
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