Harbour View Sails Away in 5 days
A Sydney icon hotel has been sold in less than a week as the Harbour View Hotel has been snapped up by a private investor for a reported $12 million. JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group sold the hotel only five days after coming to market, further evidencing strong hotel asset demand in Sydney.
Situated in the most tightly held hotel precinct in the country the hotel was offered for the first time in 20 years by the retiring private owners, after numerous unsolicited direct approaches had been received. It represents one of the few freehold hotels in the Rocks area, which attracts over 2.7 million visitors per year and was a famous haunt of celebrity Paul Hogan and filming location for the 1982 Australian movie Starstruck. The hotel comes with a tremendous Sydney history since it was rebuilt in 1924 for the bridge construction workers.
JLL National Director John Musca suggested that “we pre-empted a robust response from the JLL international and national investor client base that would take the asset quickly beyond hotelier suitors, and were overwhelmed by the interest resulting in a swift sale to a private national providore – their first hotel investment”.
The new owners have exciting plans for the hotel including a new potential roof-top bar, like those of the nearby Glenmore and Palisades Hotels with specular views over Sydney Harbour and the world-famous bridge. This is likely to see a new premium restaurant offering at the hotel and heritage sympathetic bar and terrace renovations for its valued and long serving patrons.
The sale comes at a particularly buoyant period in the hotel market which has seen numerous transactions in Sydney and continued consolidation. Only in the past week we have seen former wallaby Bill Young snap up the Friend in Hand Hotel in Glebe for $10.25 million and the Harold Park Hotel sold for $6 million. JLL’s Nick Butler stated, “we are receiving qualified, motivated acquisition directives from buyers across all levels of hotel opportunity with the highest volume of off-market activity for over two years.”
ALHs recently announced Woolworths demerger and Endeavour Drinks securitization or sale along with AVC’s ramp up pre-planned 2020 are also widely expected to drive national competition for assets further with the market foreseeably remaining active.
JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group, 10th July 2019
