Car dealership property loans

Ardent Capital Group brings the same method to every client: execution and strategy, clear advice for smart lending, and long-term growth. That means the right lender, structure and timing, straight advice so you borrow with confidence, and today's deal built toward where you want to be tomorrow. We are specialists in helping business owners secure finance to purchase their own property, and we understand the complex structures that often sit around it, including multiple trusts, holding companies and self-managed super funds. A dealership site sits beside your floorplan and other obligations, so it belongs with lenders comfortable with showroom and forecourt property who read owner-occupied against leased premises. Whether you go on to add rooftops or refinance, the team stays in your corner well after settlement. We are based in Sydney, and the commercial property finance in Sydney page covers that market specifically. Every figure is subject to serviceability, lender appetite and approval.

No. The cars on your floor are funded under a floor plan, also called bailment, which is a completely separate facility from the mortgage over your premises. Under a floor plan the financier buys the vehicle and owns it. You hold it on the showroom floor as a bailee, you pay interest or a plan fee while it sits there, and when it sells you pay out the principal. The property is one facility, secured by a mortgage over the freehold. The stock is another, secured over the vehicles and registered under the Personal Property Securities Act. They sit side by side, and a broker who only understands one of them is only half useful to you.

Dealership property lending runs from $50K up to $30M, from a used car yard on a corner site to a franchised site with workshop, parts and a display floor. Land area and main-road exposure often drive the valuation more than the improvements.

A showroom or building typically gears to around 80%, and a yard or hardstand closer to 65%, so we work the split out first. Add equity from another property you own and a cross-collateralised structure can reach up to 100% of the purchase price. The exact number depends on your file, so talk to us.

Three groups. The manufacturer captives write most of the new car floor plans. Then there are the independent financiers. And then there are the bank-owned equipment financiers that publish a floorplan product. This market has changed hands. Two large banks have exited wholesale dealer bailment and sold their books to those independents, one of them completing in December 2021. Any page still listing the old providers is out of date, and there are plenty of them. We will point you at the financiers actually writing floor plans now.

Large enough that it dwarfs most dealers property loans. Bailment stock across the market runs to billions of dollars. A financier's audited accounts describe vehicles that it owns but that are held at the dealer's premises as bailment stock, and note that while the legal form is ownership, in substance the arrangement is a secured loan to the dealer. That is a plain description of a floor plan, and it comes from the financier rather than from a broker. It is also why the two facilities have to be arranged with each other in mind rather than in isolation.

Not in the way you might expect, and we want to be precise here because plenty of pages are not. The ACCC new car retailing market study found dealer agreements are typically of relatively short duration, in most cases one to five years, with renewal at the discretion of the manufacturer. No lender publishes a rule that says your franchise term caps your property loan term, and we will not tell you one exists. What the agreement actually does is shape the question a credit team asks about the building. A generic showroom in a good location is fundable as ordinary commercial property, because if the badge changes, somebody else can trade from it. A bespoke, purpose-built single-brand facility is where lenders get more cautious, because it is harder to re-let or repurpose. That is a case to be argued, and we argue it up front.

It is different rather than harder, and in one respect it is easier. There is no franchise question at all on a used car yard, so the alternative use argument that a credit team worries about on a single-brand facility simply does not arise. What does change is the gearing. A yard is mostly land, and vacant industrial land and hardstand typically gears to around 65% rather than the 80% that applies to a building. So the site is fundable, the security is clean, and the deposit is the thing to plan for. We run that split at the start so the number you are working to is the real one.

Yes, and it is a common dealership purchase for us. You are in a strong position: you already know exactly what the site turns over, the lender can see a proven operator in the premises, and the rent you stop paying to your landlord is added back when a lender tests whether you can service the loan. The lease you are currently on is also good evidence of what the property is worth to a tenant, which helps the valuation rather than hindering it.

Four things do most of the work at valuation and they are easy to establish early. The split between building and yard, because they gear on different numbers. Road frontage and exposure, because on a dealership site they carry real value. The zoning and any planning condition on vehicle display, because it decides what you can put on the hardstand. And the service department, its power supply and its drainage, because it is assessed as industrial property in its own right. None of these are obstacles. They are just cheaper to know about at the offer stage than at settlement.

Two to three years of business financial statements and tax returns for the dealership, BAS lodgements, and a clear picture of where the margin actually comes from across new, used, finance and insurance, parts and service. Lenders want to see that the income is repeatable rather than dependent on one strong year of new car supply. Your floor plan facility and its limit will be disclosed and will form part of the assessment. Where the dealership has traded under a previous owner, the vendor’s figures are the starting point, and we help you interrogate them before you rely on them.

For a full-doc application, most lenders want two to three years of business financial statements and tax returns, personal tax returns for all guarantors, the contract of sale, the lease if you are buying the premises you occupy, your dealer agreement if you hold a franchise, and details of your floor plan facility. Plenty of dealers do not fit a standard full-doc assessment neatly. Alt-doc and low-doc routes exist, supported by an accountant’s declaration, BAS lodgements and business bank statements, at a slightly higher rate. We work through your income situation upfront to identify the best approach.

Yes, it is possible, and we arrange these. A dealership site sits comfortably inside an SMSF purchase. It is also one of the more intricate purchases in commercial finance, and the detail is what decides whether it works. The fund borrows under a limited recourse borrowing arrangement, so the property sits in a separate holding trust and the lender can only come after that one property. From 10 August 2026 a new arrangement can only be used for business real property. A dealership trading wholly as a business qualifies, and it does not matter whether you or a tenant runs it. A site with a residence on the same title generally does not. Your operating company leases the premises back from the fund, in writing, at market rent supported by an independent appraisal, and the rent has to actually be paid. The fund buys the property only. The vehicle stock stays where it belongs, on the floor plan, outside the fund. Cross-collateralisation is not available inside super, so the fund needs its own deposit and the 100% LVR structures described elsewhere on this page do not work here. Lenders cap SMSF lending below a standard purchase, generally between 65% and 80%, and want cash left in the fund after settlement. We know this sounds complicated, and we can assist to make things clearer. Reach out to our team and we will guide you through the entire process. We structure the finance, tell you which lenders will take a dealership as SMSF security and on what terms, and bring in the SMSF specialists and licensed advisers who set the fund side up. You will not be working it out on your own. Get that right and it is a solid, compliant structure. Our SMSF automotive and transport page covers how a fund buys the workshop or yard a business trades from and leases it back to it.

Then there is no property for a lender to mortgage, and it becomes a different kind of loan. You are buying goodwill, equipment and parts stock, along with the right to occupy under a lease, and the vehicle stock comes across on a floor plan rather than being purchased outright. The funding comes from your cash flow, from security you already hold, and from equipment finance over the plant. The loan term is also capped by the years left on the lease, so the more time your lease has to run, the longer the loan can be. We can arrange this, and we will tell you plainly which parts of it are fundable before you spend money on due diligence.

Often, yes. A decline usually means the file went to a lender whose appetite did not match it, not that the site is unfundable. The two common causes are a credit team gearing the whole property at the yard rate when a good part of it is building, and a purpose-built single-brand facility going in without the alternative use case argued anywhere in the submission. Both are fixable. Non-bank and specialist lenders assess dealership property differently and several publish an LVR the majors will not commit to in writing. We will give you a straight answer on whether it is fundable elsewhere.

Going direct means one lender’s appetite and one set of criteria, and in a dealership that is only half the picture anyway. The property and the floor plan are two separate facilities with two separate sets of providers, and the floor plan market in particular has changed hands in recent years. The spread on the property side is unusually wide too: the majors do not publish an owner-occupier commercial LVR at all, several non-banks publish 80% in their product guides, and the same guides drop to 65% on vacant land and hardstand. A specialist broker knows which lenders are genuinely writing dealership property this quarter and how each one reads a yard against a building.

Most of the time, no. Where a purchase requires significant preparation due to its complexity, a small mandate fee may apply, and we will always be upfront about this before any work begins.

Although we are based in Sydney, we service clients across all major Australian cities, including Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Adelaide, Canberra and Hobart, along with their surrounding regional areas. Wherever your dealership is located, we can arrange your finance.

Although our main speciality is property loans for business owners, we also assist with floor plan and bailment finance for your vehicle stock, demo and fleet vehicle finance and working capital for car dealers. On asset finance, that covers hoists, wheel alignment rigs, diagnostic equipment, the workshop fit-out, service loan cars, tow trucks and delivery vehicles. On working capital, we arrange business overdrafts, lines of credit and cash-flow funding to carry parts stock, to fund a yard extension between seasons, and to cover wages. We also arrange home loans, planned alongside your commercial borrowing: cross collateralisation, guarantees, shortfalls and trust income included. See home loans for business owners. Where the plan is to build rather than buy, we arrange dealership and service facility construction finance.

Yes. That is our core ethos, helping you understand the right strategy, structure and clear advice from the very first conversation. Our main borrower profiles are automotive operators and commercial owner-occupiers seeking finance from $50,000 upwards, and buying the premises you already trade from is very often a first commercial purchase, so it is well within our wheelhouse. We will walk you through what the showroom and the yard will actually value at, how the floor plan sits alongside the property loan, and the deposit you will genuinely need, before you commit to anything.

No. Arranging finance and advising on financial products are two different disciplines, and we do the first. What we bring is the credit analysis lenders require, the structuring of the facility, and the strategy for putting your application in front of lenders whose appetite matches it.

Because we act as a credit representative under an Australian Credit Licence, we do not give financial product, superannuation, taxation or legal advice, and nothing we provide should be taken as such. Where your circumstances need that input, we are happy to work with your accountant, financial adviser and solicitor to understand the full picture before anything is submitted.

The information on this page is general in nature and does not take account of your objectives, financial situation or needs.