Specialty retail 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. Specialty retail lives or dies on location, tenant quality and lease terms, so it goes to lenders comfortable with retail tenancies who read those signals properly rather than treating retail as one cold category. Once the shop is performing and you start weighing the next site, the team is still alongside you. Every figure is subject to serviceability, lender appetite and approval.

Not to the property valuation, and that is good news for a specialty retailer. A clothing boutique, an electronics store, a pet shop, a florist, a bookshop, a toy shop and a homewares store are all standard commercial security, valued on comparable sales and the rent the premises could command, the same as an office. So you are not asking a credit team to form a view on a trade it has never assessed before, and you are not geared down for being niche. Your trade does matter in serviceability, which is whether the accounts support the repayments, and that is where we do the work: presenting your figures the way a lender needs to read them.

Standard commercial security like a retail shop 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 shop 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 retail freehold borrows further than most shop owners expect.

No, and it is worth planning for from day one. A property loan is secured by the property, and the fit-out is a real investment, and a valuer prices the building rather than the fixtures, because the next tenant fits out to their own taste. So the joinery, display units, shelving, changing rooms, lighting track and counters are funded separately from the property: equipment finance over the fixtures and fittings, a business loan, or cash. We cost the property and the shopfit side by side from the start, so the whole project funds and there is no gap at settlement.

The address, far more than anything inside it. A valuer works from comparable sales in the same strip, arcade or centre, and from the rent the space could achieve on the open market. That means the position, the pedestrian count, the anchor tenants nearby, the frontage and the car parking are the number. Two shops of the same size with the same fit-out can value hundreds of thousands apart on position alone. A secondary position is still perfectly fundable, and it is where the non-bank lenders are usually more useful than the majors.

Yes, and it is the most common retail purchase we do. Because you already trade from the shop, 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.

It adds a layer, and it is a layer we read early. Most specialty retail at this end of the market is strata, in a strip, an arcade or a neighbourhood centre, and lenders assess the strata report alongside the shop itself. A body corporate carrying debt, a thin sinking fund or a large special levy on the horizon will tighten the lending, because it is a claim on the property that sits ahead of you. We get the strata report in front of a lender who is comfortable with what is in it, rather than letting it surface halfway through an assessment.

Two to three years of business financial statements and tax returns for the shop, BAS lodgements, and point-of-sale reports showing the sales mix and the seasonal shape of the year. Most specialty retail has a peak, whether that is Christmas, back to school, Mother’s Day or the change of season, so a lender is reading consistency across a full year rather than a single strong quarter. 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, the strata report where the shop is strata titled, and the point-of-sale or trade reports. Plenty of retailers 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 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 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 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 retail 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, 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. 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 shop went to a lender whose appetite did not match it, not that the shop is unfundable. Common causes are a credit team treating a specialty retail shop as a specialised trading asset when it is standard commercial security, a secondary position the lender does not write, or a strata report nobody read until late. 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.

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 shop is located, we can arrange your finance.

Although our main speciality is property loans for business owners, we also assist with retail fit-out finance and working capital for specialty retailers. On asset finance, that covers shopfitting and joinery, display units, shelving and counters, lighting and security systems, point-of-sale and stock management systems, and delivery vehicles. On working capital, we arrange business overdrafts, lines of credit and cash-flow funding to carry stock through a seasonal peak, to fund a 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 specialty retailers 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 fit-out gets funded, and the deposit you will genuinely need, before you commit to anything.