Gym and fitness studio 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 gym earns from its membership base through to an equipment heavy floor, so we put your purchase to lenders comfortable with the fitness sector and build the mortgage to fit. The aim is owning the space rather than renting it, and we stay alongside you as the business grows. Every figure is subject to serviceability, lender appetite and approval.

Standard commercial security like a gym building typically gears to 75% to 80% of the property value. Add equity from a property you already 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.

No, and this is the most common misconception we correct. A gym building is standard commercial security, in the same bucket as an office or a warehouse. It is valued on comparable sales and the rent it could command, not on what your business earns. That is quite different from a pub, a motel or a service station, where the property and the trade are valued as one thing and the lending gears lower as a result. Being in the standard bucket is why a gym freehold borrows further than most operators expect.

A fitness facility is a Class 9b assembly building under the National Construction Code. A shop, an office and a warehouse are not. That single line explains most of what makes a gym purchase different from any other commercial purchase, because the classification sets the standard the building has to meet: accessible access and accessible sanitary facilities, showers and change areas, waterproofing to the wet areas, room heights, light and ventilation, and occupant capacity limits with the exits that follow from them. Noise is a separate question, set by your council and by the tenancies next door rather than by the classification, and it is worth settling early in a strip or a mixed-use building. If the building is already a gym and already classified 9b, none of this is a problem. If it is not, read the next answer.

You are changing the classification of that part of the building, and the change of use brings the Class 9b upgrade obligations with it. In practice that means accessible access and accessible toilets, which can pull in a lift, a ramp or wider corridors, sanitary facilities including showers sized against your intended occupant capacity, waterproofing of areas that have never been wet, room and ceiling heights, light and ventilation, and egress widths. This is a known, checkable list. A building certifier will tell you what applies to your site and a builder will price it, and we get that number established before you exchange so it sits in the purchase budget rather than arriving after settlement. Costed properly, it is simply part of what you are paying for the building.

It does, and it is the strength of the file. Recurring direct-debit membership revenue is contracted and predictable, which is exactly what a credit team wants to read, and it is what makes a gym service its loan. What it is not is security. A lender takes a mortgage over the building, not a charge over your member base, and those are two different things. So we present the revenue where it actually counts, on the serviceability side: member numbers, churn rate, average revenue per member, and the split between direct debit and casual, set out the way a credit team needs to read it.

Separately from the property, and that is deliberate. Racks, plates, barbells, cardio, cable machines, functional rigs, reformers and spin bikes go on their own facility, usually a chattel mortgage or a finance lease, with the equipment itself as the security. A valuer prices the building and the fit-out that forms part of it, not the dumbbells, so rolling the equipment into the property loan simply makes the property loan look worse than it is. Splitting them keeps the property facility clean, usually improves the rate on it, and gets the whole site funded rather than half of it.

Yes, and it is worth saying plainly. A boutique studio carries a far lighter fit-out, no free-weight floor and no free-weight floor loading question, so it is a simpler building and a simpler loan. The Class 9b classification still applies, because it is still an assembly building, so the access, sanitary and ventilation obligations are still there. But the equipment bill is a fraction of a full gym, the structural questions largely fall away, and the tenancies these studios trade from are usually ordinary strip retail. The lending mechanics are the same. The build cost is not.

Floor loading must be verified by a structural engineer, particularly for free-weight areas and any upper-level tenancy. That is the whole answer, and be wary of anyone who gives you a number instead of a report. A ground-floor slab on a warehouse and a suspended floor on the first level of an office are two entirely different questions, and only an engineer looking at your building can answer either of them. We make sure the report is commissioned early, because if it changes the fit-out it also changes what you can afford to pay for the property.

Yes, and it is the most common fitness purchase we do. Because you already train from the site, you know exactly what it earns, the lender can see a proven business 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 building is also already fitted out and already classified for the use, so there is no change of use to fund. The lease you are currently on is the best available evidence of what the property is worth to a tenant, which helps the valuation rather than hindering it.

Two to three years of business financial statements and tax returns for the site, BAS lodgements, and reports from your billing platform showing active members, churn and average revenue per member. A lender is reading the consistency of the recurring revenue rather than a headline profit figure. Where the site 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 there is one, and your membership and billing reports. Plenty of gym owners 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. Retail premises sit comfortably inside an SMSF purchase, more comfortably than most asset classes. 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 gym 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 gym trading wholly as a business qualifies, and it does not matter whether you or a tenant runs it. A shop with a flat above it on the same title generally does not, which catches a lot of the shop-top strip retail that boutique studios trade from. Your operating company leases the gym back from the fund, in writing, at market rent supported by an independent appraisal, and the rent has to actually be paid. 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. It is, and that is exactly why we do it every day. 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 gym 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.

Then there is no property for a lender to mortgage, and it becomes a different kind of loan. You are buying goodwill, fit-out, plant and the member base, along with the right to occupy under a lease, so 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.

Most of the time, no. We are paid a commission by the lender once your loan settles. Where a purchase requires significant preparation, a small mandate fee may apply, and we will always be upfront about this before 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 gym is located, we can arrange your finance.

Although our main speciality is property loans for business owners, we also assist with gym equipment and fit-out finance and working capital for gyms. On asset finance, that covers racks, plates, barbells and free-weight flooring, cardio and cable machines, functional rigs, pilates reformers and spin bikes, along with the audio, lighting and access-control systems a 24-hour site runs on. On working capital, we arrange business overdrafts, lines of credit and cash-flow funding to carry a site through a quiet quarter, to fund a re-equip between peaks, and to cover wages.

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 gym and studio operators and retail owner-occupiers seeking finance from $100,000 upwards, and buying the site you already train from is very often a first commercial purchase, so it is well within our wheelhouse. We will walk you through what the property will actually value at, what the Class 9b upgrade will cost, how the equipment gets funded, and the deposit you will genuinely need, before you commit to anything.