Dicks Hotel is latest Balmain pub for sale

The sale of Dick's follows the decision by private investor Jon Adgemis' Eastern Property Alliance to sell the Town Hall also in Balmain, which has turned into a mixed-use site with Orange Theory gym and Massage Envy as the main tenants. The liquour licence has remained with the Booze Exchange bottle shop on the premises.

The 132-year-old Exchange Hotel on Beattie Street also closed its doors after being sold in July 2017 to Mr Adgemis.

According to Ray White's Asia Pacific director Andrew Jolliffe, hotels such as Dick's in Balmain, and the market generally, ''are in good order''.

"We are on record as saying the market for well positioned, reliably profitable, A grade hospitality stock is extremely strong and strengthening" Mr Jolliffe said.

''And in Balmain, a noted pub suburb, the sale of the Dick's Hotel comes at a time when two other hotels, The Exchange and Town Hall, were recently converted to other uses.

"The validity of the east coast property market is underpinned by particularly strong commercial property fundamentals, and accordingly it is no surprise to us that we find ourselves at an inflection point in terms of the test for highest and best use for some assets within the category".

The hotel occupies a highly visible corner site spanning in excess of 600 square metres, in addition to more than $3 million per annum in food and beverage revenue, and has nine gaming machine licenses with the ability to increase this number significantly.

Mr Jolliffe said the Sydney pub market has continued its strong performance with recent sales including the auction of Sydney's Padstow Inn, which sold under the hammer for $26 million last month.

Other sales include EBC Capital's Ophir Tavern in Orange which sold to the well-known and Sydney based O'Hara family, and the separate sales of both the Amaroo and Commercial
hotels in the State's Central West regional centre of Dubbo in the same week.

Having previously sold the inner-west's Cat and Fiddle, Nag's Head, Vic on the Park and most recently Rozelle's Garry Owen, Mr Jolliffe and his colleague Blake Edwards said there is a lot of depth for signature suburban hotels such as Dick's.

"Typically, a $3 million to $4 million equity cheque will afford an investor a prime commercial property holding with an identifiable and reliable history of revenue generation, Mr Edwards said.