Hakfoort Group pays $20m for freehold going concern of Brisbane’s Lord Stanley Hotel

A family renowned for “breathing new life into assets” has expanded its hotel empire, buying a Brisbane pub as the sector experiences a surge of transactions.

A renowned Queensland pub family has bought its second Brisbane hotel as the sector continues its strong multimillion-dollar run.

The Hakfoort Group paid about $20m for the freehold and going concern of the Lord Stanley Hotel in East Brisbane.

Albert Hakfoort Jr, whose late father Albert built up the group, runs Hakfoort Group with his mother Dianne.

The family owns and operates three pubs in Toowoomba, the Tingalpa Hotel in Brisbane’s eastern suburbs and another in Bowen in the Whitsunday region.

JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group’s Tom Gleeson handled the sale on behalf of Hotel Property Investments (HPI) and the operator Australian Venue Co.

The Lord Stanley Hotel in East Brisbane.

“JLL is incredibly pleased to have assisted with the strategic divestment for both ownership stakeholders and congratulate them both,” he said.

“We’re equally excited to see what the Hakfoort Group, who are renowned for breathing new life in to assets, do with the Lord Stanley Hotel into the future.

“The Lord Stanley Hotel sale adds weight to the significant list of hotel transactions for 2022 thus far and provides both quantitative and qualitative evidence of the unfulfilled demand for freehold going-concern hotels within Queensland.”

The divestment represents a premium for HPI, with the passive freehold sale reflecting a 4.62 per cent yield while the sale of the leasehold allows AVC to redeploy capital to other strategic acquisitions.

The Lord Stanley sits on 5500sq m of freehold land in 5km of the Brisbane CBD and 1500m from the Gabba, 40 gaming machines, function space, beer garden and significant underused footprint.

The Hakfoort Group earlier this year sold the historic Redbrick Hotel in Woolloongabba, in Brisbane’s inner south for about $7m – which it held for 23 years – to richlisters the Mathieson family.

In the past month, there has been a string of pub deals, with Gold Coast-based Artesian Hospitality recently securing the leasehold of the vacant GPO in Fortitude Valley to create a multi-venue destination by early next year.

Also, AVC took over the operation of The Boundary Hotel in West End from Colin Macleod’s Oz Pub Group, which bought the freehold going concern for the historic pub in 2017.

On the Gold Coast, publican developer Bruce Donnachy sold the freehold of his bustling Arundel Tavern on the Gold Coast to Paul Xu’s Sun Hotels for about $27m.

Pineapple Hotel at Kangaroo Point in Brisbane.

Toowoomba’s Shamrock Hotel was sold by Wayne and Seona Lee to former AHA vice-president Pat Gurr and other investors for about $6m.

One of Brisbane’s oldest pubs, the heritage-listed Pineapple Hotel in Kangaroo Point, is on the market for the first time in 32 years and the freehold going-concern pub is expected to sell for more than $35m.

Owned by the Singleton family, the pub is being marketed by CBRE Hotels’s Paul Fraser.