Sydney’s Pendle Inn goes for $75m amid suburban pubs boom

The Sydney pub boom has been confirmed by yet another record sale, with the Pendle Inn changing hands for about $75m in a sign that values continue to rise.

The Pendle Inn Hotel has sold for about $75m.

The Sydney pub boom has been confirmed by yet another record sale, with the Pendle Inn changing hands for about $75m in a sign that values continue to rise.

Pubs are riding a heady cocktail of lifting values, cheap debt, and a strong recovery from ­pandemic-related lockdowns, with big families and institutions buying up.

The incoming Pendle Inn owner, an existing Sydney operator which picked up the property from the founding family, is planning to expand the food and beverage operations.

Groups like float candidate PUBLIC group – the brainchild of high-profile deal-maker Jon Adgemis backed by Alex Waislitz-led investment house Thorney – and Sydney pub baron Justin Hemmes have been adding to their properties with expanded food and beverage offerings throughout the suburbs.

Pubs are selling at a rapid clip including in regional areas, with the Shaws Bay Hotel selling for $31m. In Sydney, pub group Redcape is selling Minskys Hotel Cremorne, while the Sports Hotel Bankstown and Doonside Hotel are also selling, with the deals worth more than $150m.

The buyer, a pub group which also operates Burwood’s Avondale Hotel, will set a new course for the Pendle Inn, with the sale the first since it was built in the 1950s.

A western Sydney landmark, Pendle Inn sits on a 7564sq m site opposite the Pendle Hill train station, 30km west of the Sydney CBD.

The hotel facilities include a public bar, bistro, gaming room with 30 gaming machine entitlements, large drive-through bottle shop, outdoor terraces and accommodation rooms. It also ­offers future town centre development scope.

The private individual family sellers said they were in an off-market capacity.

The Sydney hotel market continues to see record levels of capital flows into the sector, with last week’s sale of the Earlwood Hotel for $45.2m adding to the long list of large Sydney hotels to have changed hands this year, and with numerous other hotels mooted to currently be in the final stages of changing hands.

“We have seen over $1.3bn of pub hotel transactions nationally in the last 12 months, with significant activity now emerging in the traditionally tighter-held markets of Melbourne and Adelaide, testament to the resurgent capital prioritisation of the sector,” selling agents JLL Hotels’ John Musca said.

Last month the sale of Crossroads Hotel in Sydney’s southwestern suburb of Casula, for nearly $160m, smashed the national pub sale record.

Pubs came through the ­pandemic stronger as they still generated sales from bottle shops, and also bounced back quickly on the back of exceptional domestic trade, unimpeded by uncertain borders and difficulties in ­travelling.