Marlow divests Orange pub for record price
Marlow Hotel Group has sold Orange’s Robin Hood Hotel for $51 million – an extraordinary 268 per cent premium on what it paid the Marshall family in March, 2021.
The result falls short of the state’s regional record pub price – $104m – set in 2019 when MA Financial acquired Byron Bay’s Beach Hotel. Another watering hole near there, the Hotel Brunswick at Brunswick Heads fetched $67m in late 2021 while last year, the Windsor Castle Hotel in East Maitland, near Newcastle, also collected $51m.
However it is a local watermark, more than double the ($25m) value achieved by an Arthur Laundy backed consortium for Orange’s Hotel Canobolas 15 months ago.
It also smashes the country or inland NSW record of $27m for Wagga Wagga’s Thomas Blamey Tavern, which traded last March.
Elsewhere in the Central Tablelands town of Orange, 250 kilometres west of Sydney, Investment Management Group Hotels, a Canberra based syndicate, two years ago outlaid $24m for The Royal Hotel, about 2.5 kilometres from the Robin Hood.
HTL Property’s Dan Dragicevich, Blake Edwards and Andrew Jolliffe represented MHG, led by husband and wife Jason and Peta Marlow, which still retains eight venues.
The buyers are a syndicate led by Tim Ireson and Ben Cochrane who elsewhere in Orange hold the Ophir Hotel. Their book also includes the Railway Hotel at Millthorpe, 23 kilometres south of the Robin Hood, and Namoi Hotel at Narrabri – the latter purchased four months ago.
Development upside
On 3.27 hectares at 30 Burrendong Way, also fronting Albert Street, the Robin Hood Hotel holds significant development upside with undeveloped tracts facing residential zones (story continues below).
MHG undertook a major renovation, adding a bistro, indoor playground, beer gardens and car parks.
“The Robin Hood Hotel exhibits the very best value accretive pub fundamentals and through MHG’s hard work and expertise, these have been activated with the results evident in the venue’s patronage and trade,” Mr Dragicevich said.
Mr Jolliffe added “with robust revenue attraction being enjoyed, the imminency of greater legislative clarity in the near future and continued major lending support, the [hotel] asset class firmly exists as a first choice investment option for both corporate and private vehicles nationally”.
More than $515m has been spent on pubs this calendar year, according to the agents, including Neutral Bay’s The Oaks, which is speculated to be trading for c$125m to two time Academy Award nominated producer Doug Mitchell.
Last April, Casula’s Crossroads Hotel, west of Sydney, sold to Nelson Meers for $160m – a national record for an asset of this type.
HTL Property brokered that deal too.
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