Supermarket 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. Whether you are securing the site you already trade from or bringing a tenanted store into your portfolio, no two funders read a supermarket asset the same way, so it goes to the ones that value that kind of property fairly. Once you have settled, the team stays close as you trade up or add the next store. Every figure is subject to serviceability, lender appetite and approval.

Standard commercial security like a supermarket 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 supermarket 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 supermarket freehold borrows further than most grocers expect.

Separately from the property, and that is deliberate. Refrigeration is the largest plant cost in a supermarket, and it secures far less than it costs, because a rack and a run of cabinets installed for your store are worth a fraction of that to anybody else. A valuer prices the building and the fit-out that forms part of it, not the cabinets that can be unbolted and taken away. So the premises carry a property facility and the plant carries its own, usually a chattel mortgage. Checkouts, shelving, scales and the point-of-sale system are funded the same way. Splitting them keeps the property loan clean, usually improves the rate on it, and gets the whole store funded rather than half of it.

It changes the accounts a lender is reading, so it is worth explaining properly in the submission. Metcash supplies more than 1,600 independent supermarkets and licenses the banners they trade under, and it has told the ACCC that IGA retailers acquire around 74% of their goods from Metcash on average. That supply obligation is a real feature of the business, and a credit team that has not seen it before will ask about it. The property itself is assessed as standard commercial security regardless of which banner is over the door. We set the supply arrangement and the store economics out clearly rather than leaving an assessor to guess at them.

The business and the property are two separate valuations, done on two different bases, and conflating them is where a lot of grocers come unstuck. The shop is valued on comparable sales and achievable rent. The business is valued on what it earns. Market convention prices an independent grocery business on a multiple of earnings plus stock at value, and a vendor or a business broker will usually quote it on that basis, but it is a convention rather than a standard, and a lender will form its own view. If you are buying the freehold and the business together, expect the two to be assessed apart.

Yes, and it is the most common supermarket 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.

Two to three years of business financial statements and tax returns for the store, BAS lodgements, and point-of-sale reports showing the sales mix across grocery, fresh, deli and bakery. Gross margin in grocery is thin and stock turns fast, so a lender is reading volume and consistency rather than a headline profit figure. Where the store 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 or banner agreement, and the point-of-sale or trade reports. Plenty of grocers 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 supermarket 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 store went to a lender whose appetite did not match it, not that the store is unfundable. A common cause is a credit team treating a supermarket as a specialised trading asset when it is standard commercial security, and gearing it down accordingly. 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 grocery, 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. A specialist broker knows which lenders are genuinely writing retail this quarter and how each one reads a supermarket. 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 supermarket refrigeration finance and working capital for supermarkets. On asset finance, that covers refrigeration, coolrooms and freezer plant, checkouts and self-service terminals, shelving, scales and point-of-sale systems, and delivery vehicles. On working capital, we arrange business overdrafts, lines of credit and cash-flow funding to carry stock through a seasonal swing, 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 independent grocers 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 refrigeration gets funded, and the deposit you will genuinely need, before you commit to anything.