Panel beater and spray painter 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. Spray booths, extraction systems and the environmental conditions of a smash repair site make some lenders cautious, so we present your body shop to those comfortable lending against the premises. Owning the workshop rather than renting quietly shifts the economics, and we stay beside you as the yard fills and a second site comes into view. Every figure is subject to serviceability, lender appetite and approval.

Often a good part of it is. Chattels are not normally included in a mortgage valuation. Fixtures that form part of the building are. A downdraft booth is engineered into the fabric of the shed: the cabin, the extraction stack and ducting, the make-up air plant and the slab work under the pit are installed, not parked. That reads very differently to a hoist that can be unbolted and taken away on a truck. In most trades the fit-out is a write-off in a valuer’s eyes, and here a good chunk of it is not. It is not automatic, it depends on how the booth was installed and how the valuer treats it, so we put the case in writing in the submission rather than leaving it to chance.

A panel shop or shed typically gears to around 80%. Adding equity from a residential property or other business assets you already own can lift a cross-collateralised structure to 100% of the purchase price. The exact number depends on your file and serviceability, so talk to us.

A booth is the biggest single item in a panel shop and the price depends on the size, whether it bakes, the burner, the filtration and the make-up air. We do not quote a figure we cannot stand behind, so we get you a real quote from an installer before you exchange rather than after. That matters because a booth at the end of its life is a cost you carry the day you settle, and it changes what you can afford to pay for the building. A second-hand booth can be a sound buy, but the cabin is the cheap part. The install, the compliance work, the extraction and the make-up air are where the money goes, so price the whole job. We build the replacement into the funding plan up front so it is funded, not improvised.

It depends on the state you are in and on the scale of the operation, and it is worth being precise rather than assuming. For a vehicle refinishing booth the local council is usually the consent authority, and the booth is approved through the development consent for the premises rather than through a state environmental licence. Larger industrial coating operations can sit under the state environment regulator instead. What matters to your finance is simply that the approval exists, that it is current, and that it matches the booth that is actually installed. Those are checkable items and we check them.

Air emissions and waste, primarily. Panel and paint work involves solvents, volatile organic compounds, isocyanates in two-pack paint, paint sludge and, on many sites, abrasive blasting residue. All of it is well understood and it is managed rather than feared. The extraction stack, the filters and the ventilation rate are what an inspector looks at, and paint sludge, trade waste and the wash bay sit under a trade waste agreement with the water authority. One state-specific point worth knowing: in Queensland, abrasive blasting carried out other than in a fully enclosed booth is a notifiable activity and it can put the land on the environmental register. That is a Queensland rule rather than a national one, and where it applies we check the register position before you exchange. On contamination, a site history rarely stops a purchase, but it has to be established rather than assumed. Where the history warrants it the process in Australia starts with a Preliminary Site Investigation, and only if that raises a question does it go to a Detailed Site Investigation, which samples soil and groundwater. At least one lender lists contaminated land as an unacceptable security outright, so we settle the position at the front of the deal rather than letting it surface at valuation.

No. It is standard commercial security, in the same bucket as a warehouse, a shop or an office, and it is valued on comparable sales and the rent the premises could command. That is the easy part of your file. The part that actually needs work is the booth: what it cost, how much life is left in it, whether it is a fixture or a chattel in the valuer’s eyes, and whether its approval stands up. That is where we spend our time, because that is where the money is.

Yes, and it is the most common panel shop purchase we do. You already know what the shop turns over, you know exactly how hard the booth is worked and how much life is left in it, 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 and they are all cheap to establish early. Three-phase power, because a booth, a compressor and dust extraction will not run without it and retrofitting it is expensive. Ceiling height and the clearance for the extraction stack, because they decide what booth the building can physically hold. Drive-through access and roller door width, because they decide whether you can ever take trucks, vans or a tow-in. And the trade waste arrangement, the wash bay and the oil and water separator, because they are part of the building. None of these are obstacles. They are simply cheaper to know about at the offer stage than at settlement.

Two to three years of business financial statements and tax returns for the shop, BAS lodgements, and a clear picture of your labour, paint and parts split. Lenders want to see that the booth is busy and that the work is repeatable. Insurer panel work, fleet, dealership or manufacturer approvals are worth naming in the submission, because they are contracted work a credit team can count on rather than passing trade. Where the shop 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, the booth approval and any environmental reports on the site. Plenty of repairers 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.

Separately from the property, and that is deliberate. Compressors, dust extraction, chassis alignment benches, spot welders, preparation bays and paint mixing systems can be unbolted and taken away, so a valuer does not price them into the building and they secure far less than they cost. They are funded by chattel mortgage or equipment finance on their own facility, which keeps the property loan clean and usually improves the rate on it. The booth is the exception worth arguing about, because a properly installed booth is a fixture rather than a chattel, and that is a case we make in writing.

Yes, it is possible, and we arrange these. An industrial shed 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 panel shop 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 panel shop 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 panel shop 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 panel shop 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, the booth and the plant, tooling and paint 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. Read the lease closely on the booth, because if it is a fixture it may belong to the landlord rather than to the business you are buying. 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 shop is unfundable. The two common causes are a valuation that wrote the booth off entirely and left the security looking thinner than it is, and an environmental or approval question raised at valuation rather than dealt with at the start. Both are fixable, and the second one is a great deal easier to fix before it happens. Non-bank and specialist lenders assess automotive 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.

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 panel shop is located, we can arrange your finance.

Although our main speciality is property loans for business owners, we also assist with panel and paint equipment finance and working capital for panel beaters. On asset finance, that covers spray booths, extraction and make-up air plant, compressors, dust extraction, preparation bays, chassis alignment benches, spot welders, paint mixing systems and tow trucks. On working capital, we arrange business overdrafts, lines of credit and cash-flow funding to carry paint and consumables stock, to bridge the gap while insurer invoices are paid, 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 automotive operators and industrial owner-occupiers seeking finance from $100,000 upwards, and buying the panel 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 shed and the booth will actually value at, how the approvals are checked, and the deposit you will genuinely need, before you commit to anything.