Pubs veteran Martin Short sells The Redfern for $20 million-plus
Established hotelier Martin Short has sold one of his pubs in Sydney’s inner-south off-market for over $20 million – more than triple what he paid for the venue just nine years ago – to a family-run hospitality business.
The Redfern is one of eight hotels owned by Short’s company Welcome Hospitality, which includes his Sydney venues The Royal Oak Hotel in Double Bay and Gregory Hills Hotel in Gregory Hills.
Short also owns regional and coastal venues such as the Moonee Beach Hotel, Sawtell Hotel and Toormina Hotel in NSW’s mid-north coast, and Moss Vale Hotel in NSW’s Southern Highlands region.
The two-storey pub in Redfern has a large public bar that offers more than 26 beers to its patrons and an upstairs sports area with 16 gaming machines. The pub generates about $6 million in annual revenue across its food, beverage and gaming departments.
Records show Short bought the venue in 2016 for $6 million under the company name Redfern & George Investments Pty Limited. Short and Ben Shaw are directors of the company.
Short remains a director of The Royal Hotel at Leichhardt in Sydney’s inner-west, which his family bought for $5.55 million in 2013, and holiday rental property Rancho Relaxo in Crescent Head, NSW mid-north coast.
The latest pub transaction follows a string of sales across Sydney in just four weeks including The Australian Hotel in McGraths Hill for $40 million, Jon Adgemis’ Kurrajong Hotel in Erskineville for about $20 million and the De Angelis family’s Bath Arms Hotel for $43 million in Burwood.
HTL Property’s Andrew Jolliffe, who brokered the sale alongside Dan Dragicevich and Sam Handy, said a chronic lack of stock available for investors was underpinning the strength in the pub market.
“Conversely, there’s a plethora of well-priced and accessible funding for the asset class,” Jolliffe told The Australian Financial Review. “Lenders are so enthusiastic about the asset class because it is so heavily regulated that it acts as a barrier to entry for other products to take up market share.
“Our considered view is that the current market trends will extend into and beyond 2026.”
Short’s sister, Paris Ballantyne, is chief executive of W. Short Hospitality, named after their father, the late Warwick Short, who died in 2004.
Their brother Fraser Short once owned a significant portfolio of pubs under his own hospitality company called The Sydney Collective. Most of those venues were sold off two years ago, before the company went into administration.
The Short family formerly owned the Seabreeze Beach Hotel in South West Rocks, NSW’s mid-north coast, before selling it for $32 million in 2023.
