Jewellery store property finance

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 secure, fitted-out jewellery premises trades and holds its value differently from ordinary retail, and the loan is built around how specialty retail actually reads to a lender. When the business grows or a second site comes into view, we are still alongside you well past settlement. Every figure is subject to serviceability, lender appetite and approval.

Standard commercial security like a jewellery showroom 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 jewellery showroom 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 and not on what is sitting in the cabinets. 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 jewellery freehold borrows further than most jewellers expect.

Not against the property loan, no. You may well carry a stock holding worth more than the shop it sits in, but a mortgagee takes the building, and the building is an ordinary shop. Your stock is funded as working capital instead, through a business overdraft, a line of credit or trade finance, and those facilities are usually supported by property you already own or by the cash flow of the business. We arrange the property loan and the working capital facility together, so the whole store is funded rather than half of it.

No. Inventory lending against a dealer floor is well established in Australia for motor vehicles and for machinery, and it is a genuinely useful product in those industries. There is no equivalent product for jewellery stock. We went looking for one and it does not exist, so if a broker tells you they can arrange it, they are describing a facility they cannot deliver. What is real, and what we do arrange, is working capital: an overdraft, a line of credit or trade finance sized to the stock you need to carry and the season you need to carry it for.

Jewellers Block is the specialist cover for a jewellery business, and it is the policy a lender will require in place, with its interest noted, before it settles. It covers your stock, including loose stones, finished pieces and precious metals, along with showcases, bench tools and cash, and it covers them on the premises, in transit and at exhibitions and trade shows. It responds to burglary, robbery, grab-and-run and substitution. The reason it decides your loan is this: cover can be refused outright where the security measures at the premises are inadequate. No adequate security means no policy, and no policy means no settlement. Alarms, safes, cameras and a compliant strongroom reduce the premium where they are in place. We settle that chain early with the insurer and the lender, so it is not sitting on the settlement checklist a week out.

Not in the way jewellers hope. A valuer prices the building and the fit-out that forms part of it, on comparable sales and achievable rent, and a safe or a strongroom is a fit-out item that serves your trade rather than the next occupier’s. So the money you spend on security earns its keep by protecting the stock and by making the insurance writable, not by lifting the number the valuer returns. That is exactly why we fund the security fit-out as fit-out and keep it out of the property facility.

Yes, and it is the most common jewellery store purchase we do. Because you already trade from the store, you know exactly what it earns, 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 the best available evidence of what the property is worth to a tenant, which helps the valuation rather than hindering it.

For a full-doc application, most lenders want two to three years of business financial statements and tax returns for the store, BAS lodgements, personal tax returns for all guarantors, the contract of sale, the lease, point-of-sale reports showing the sales mix across new jewellery, bridal, watches, repairs and custom work, a current stock valuation, and the Jewellers Block policy or a quote for it. Jewellery revenue is seasonal and the average sale is high, so a lender is reading stock turn and consistency across the year rather than a single strong quarter. Plenty of jewellers 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 store 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 shop 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 on the market. Your operating company leases the store 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 jewellery store 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. The stock stays outside the fund and is financed separately.

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 stock, 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. In jewellery the stock is usually the largest line in the price, and it is bought and funded as working capital rather than as part of a term loan. We can arrange this, and we will tell you plainly which parts of it are fundable before you spend money on due diligence.

It depends on your state, and the rule most people repeat is wrong. There is no statutory minimum term in New South Wales, where it was repealed in 2017, or in Queensland, which never had one. Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, the ACT, the Northern Territory and Tasmania each set a five year default, and even there it can be waived by certificate. If you are buying a business rather than the freehold, what matters commercially is not the statutory minimum but how many years you actually have left, because that caps your loan term.

Often, yes. A decline usually means the store went to a lender whose appetite did not match it, not that the store is unfundable. Two causes come up again and again: a credit team treating a jewellery store as a specialised trading asset when it is standard commercial security, and a file that tried to carry the stock inside the property loan instead of funding it as working capital. Non-bank and specialist lenders assess retail 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. In jewellery the spread between lenders is unusually wide: the majors do not publish an owner-occupier commercial LVR at all, while several non-banks publish 75% to 80% in their product guides, and the loan terms differ by more than a decade. There is also a second facility to place, because the stock has to be funded somewhere, and the lender who writes the best property loan is not always the one who writes the best overdraft alongside it. A specialist broker knows which lenders are genuinely writing retail this quarter and how each one reads a jeweller. Presenting a store to the wrong credit team is how a fundable purchase gets declined.

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 store is located, we can arrange your finance.

Although our main speciality is property loans for business owners, we also assist with jewellery store fit-out finance and working capital for jewellers. On asset finance, that covers the strongroom, safes, alarms, cameras and security glazing, along with showcases, display lighting, workshop benches, laser welders and polishing plant, point-of-sale systems and vehicles. On working capital, we arrange business overdrafts, lines of credit and trade finance to carry your stock through Christmas and the engagement season, to fund a showroom refit between trading 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 jewellers and retail owner-occupiers seeking finance from $100,000 upwards, and buying the shop 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 property will actually value at, how the stock gets funded, why your insurer has a say in your settlement, and the deposit you will genuinely need, before you commit to anything.