Hi Hellman
There is no 11 second or any other kind of short solution to choosing a motel. It is a specialist area and requires lots of chaff sorting. There are always a number of good motels for sale, and then lots of "overpriced ones" for reasons of requiring expensive refurbishment, or low ROI.
There are a number of options with motels and these are my suggestions for minimum reasonable returns (ROI) without any CG:
1. Buy freehold, operate yourself. 15%
2. Buy freehold, operate under management. 15% less $50-$70K management.
3. Buy freehold, lease it to an operator. 9-10%
4. Buy leasehold, operate yourself. 20-30%
5. Buy leasehold, operate under management. 20-30% less $50-70K management.
Location is nearly everything, and of course location relative to other essential factors ( which region, which town, location in town relative to competitors/local attractions/eateries/fuel ; star rating, number of equally rated competitors, traffic flow, room sizes, tariffs, street appeal, service, room quality. They were not in order by the way.
Restaurants complicate the issue. Motels more than 200 m from an eatery suffer without a restaurant on site. Restaurants can be a headache.
A motel surrounded by eateries is a complementary situation.
Formule 1 motels recipe for motel is threefold (in very simple terms) :
high traffic flows, near food, near fuel.
My last valuation cost $2400. Others were over $3K.
Cap gains are possible apart from the time factor with the land, by increasing the bottom line. Valuers use a cap rate of between 12-15%, so any improvement in bottom line is roughly x7 then added onto the motel value.
LVR is high, so a motel ties up capital. I'm in the process of discussions with St George Bank on how to get more of our tied up capital working for us. With security of 40%, we feel the Bank could ease that a bit and allow us to buy some IP's which we could sell off if they get the jitters. So far, they haven't said no, only that they'll take each IP scenario on it's merit.
Using residential real estate as security to buy a motel saves about 1% on interest. St George will lend at res rates (say 6.7%) on a motel (instead of commercial rates - say 7.7%) provided you offer res real estate as security.
Please provide a sketch of the motel you have in mind which would allow a more specific comments - e.g. number of rooms, construction type and date, star rating, location, restaurant, pool, chain, title, for a start.
I'll answer your PM as well, just as soon as I get through the busy motel morning cleaning routine, but I especially want to feedback the forum too, they have all been so good to me.
cheers
crest133