Minskys Hotel and commercial suites in Cremorne on Sydney’s Lower North Shore is being sold with a price tag of about $35 million.

Famed late-night watering hole Minskys sold for $39m

Carolyn Cummins|May 13, 2022

The famed Minskys pub in Cremorne, known for its late night singing with the piano man John Watson, has been sold for $39 million to the pub and retail investors -the Karellas family – in conjunction with the pub operator Mitchell Waugh.

Redcape Hotel group, now under the MA Hotel Group banner, put the two-storey property up for sale in late March to take advantage of the booming pub sector. The 3,344 square metre sites comes with 25 poker machines, a separate bottle shop and strata title offices from which Redcape used to operate.

It is the first time in two decades the popular pub, with its 4am licence, was offered for sale. The sale also comes at a time when close to $1.5 billion worth of pubs have changed hands over the past year.

Another large pub, the Strathfield is being sold by the private Whelan family with price expectations of more than $90 million.

For Mitchell Waugh and his Public House Management Group, who is likely to operate the pub on behalf of the Karellas family, it is a return to Sydney’s lower North Shore having sold the Buena pub in the adjoining suburb of Mosman in 2018 to focus on his properties in the east – the Royal Hotel Paddington, The Toxteth and Marrickville Ritz.

The Karellas family did not comment on the sale.

Redcape chief executive Dan Brady said the group recognised the strong demand for quality hotel assets in the market.

“The opportunity for an incoming operator/investor to further optimise a large licence footprint and have a more proactive entertainment lead business plan would see tremendous value add that given our scale we could not realise,” Brady said.

Advising Redcape were JLL hotels & hospitality group managing director John Musca, senior vice president Ben McDonald and JLL metropolitan sales & investments director, Gordon McFadyen, who said the listing generated 65 enquiries from a wide-ranging domestic buyer pool.

McDonald said potential buyers were seeking to capitalise on the opportunity to acquire the hotel and associated commercial floor space for the first time in nearly two decades.

“The opportunity to seize an asset of such quality with obvious and significant value-add potential via repositioning and/or strategic sell down, fuelled what was one of the most competitive campaigns we’ve managed in the last five years,” Mr McDonald said.

The Minskys Hotel sale adds weight to the significant list of hotel transactions for 2022 so far and is JLL’s seventh sale in the last month, following the landmark Pendle Inn Hotel transaction in Western Sydney for $70 million las month.

Other sales have included the Amble Inn Corindi Beach, to Ned Kelly’s Kelly Hotel group by JLL and the Merewether Beach hotel in Newcastle to Glenn Piper for $40 million through HTL Property.

Musca said with JLL Hotels in final stages of negotiating over $250 million in asset sales, the firm maintains their bullish outlook on market conditions, with significant pools of capital still seeking adequate investment options in the hotel space.