The South Terrace Hotel, a grim looking but profitable pub in Bankstown, has been scooped up by Oscars Group only a week after the outfit, run by Bill and Mario Gravanis, offloaded a handful of hotels in Tamworth.
Oscars, which boasts Sydney’s heritage-listed Luna Park in its property stable, bought the pub for $54 million from Redcape Hospitality, a group tangled up in the collapsed Taylor Square pubs deal.
Bankstown, in Sydney’s west, is former prime minister Paul Keating’s birthplace, and it was also home to cricket legends (twin brothers) Steve and Mark Waugh.
Under the deal, Redcape, which is now under the MA Hotel Management arm of MA Financial Group, will use the sale funds to expand in South-East Queensland, where it owns the Plough Inn in Southbank and the Orion Hotel in Springfield.
Oscars has a big portfolio and intends to upgrade the 2100-square-metre pub at 280 South Terrace, including by taking advantage of an accompanying high-rise planning guideline. The pub’s sports bar is popular, as are its beer garden and 28 poker machines.
Oscars group was part of a consortium that last week sold five venues in Tamworth, in north-eastern NSW, for a combined $160 million.
The transactions follow a plethora of recent pub deals, including the Richards on the Park Hotel at Canley Vale for $64 million, the Silverwater Hotel for $75 million and the Oaks Hotel at Neutral Bay for $140 million.
JLL Hotels’ John Musca and Ben McDonald completed all the sales.
Big guns
Fund manager David Di Pilla’s fast-growing HMC Capital has snapped up the Caringbah Shopping Centre in Sydney’s south in a deal worth about $72 million.
The former UBS investment manager will include the new acquisition in its unlisted HMC Australian Retail Partnerships Fund.
Located at 54-64 President Avenue, Caringbah, it was last sold for $13.2 million in 1997 to private owners and is one of only 15 freehold neighbourhood shopping centres within 500 metres of a railway station on over a hectare. HMC also owns the nearby HomeCo mall.
The 5698-square-metre centre is anchored by Woolworths, with the new owner saying it intends to reposition the major tenant lease, “reflecting conviction in the centre’s long-term income durability and growth potential”.
HMC’s real estate platform has grown to more than $10.2 billion with unlisted funds exceeding $2.7 billion. Under the deal, the unlisted HMC fund also exchanged on the Burwood Brickworks in Melbourne.
It comes as major retail investors say they have faith in the sector despite consumer uncertainty at present.
In the recent Shopping Centre News 2026 Big Guns report, mall owners said they could weather any downturn by offering a wide variety of tenants such as gyms, beauty salons and even office spaces and food-related businesses.
Vicinity Centres and Gandel’s Chadstone shopping centre won the Big Guns gong with $2.7 billion in sales. Scentre’s Westfield Marion was the first in South Australia to surpass $1 billion in annual retail sales.
Stonebridge Property Group’s Philip Gartland, Lincoln Blackledge and Carl Molony advised on the Caringbah sale.
Surplus land
The Sydney Metro, on behalf of the NSW government, is selling off a huge block of valuable inner-west property, the last remaining large-scale vacant industrial landholding in Marrickville.
The land (Proposed Lot 61 at 11 Sydenham Road and Proposed Lots 71 and 72 off Sydney Steel Road in Marrickville) can be acquired individually or as a whole with three options: 24,810 square metres, 2563 sqm or 4029 sqm.
Potential buyers will be able to seize sizable parcels in one of Sydney’s most tightly held and supply-constrained precincts, said Colliers agents Trent Gallagher and Michael Crombie, who are handling the sale. No price was disclosed.
The combined 30,873 square metres across three land parcels represent the largest remaining vacant industrial landholdings to be offered in Marrickville, underpinned by general industrial zoning with no prescribed height limits.
Early works
Coronation Property has secured approval for early works at its build-to-rent development in Waterloo under the state significant development application pathway.
Following approval, Coronation will start piling and excavation works, marking a significant step forward in “accelerating the delivery of large-scale rental housing in Sydney”, said Joe Nahas, managing director of Coronation Property.
Waterloo was designed by SJB and Bates Smart, in collaboration with Curious Practice and Chen Chow Little.
Near Waterloo Metro, just 1.5 kilometres from the CBD, the 2.1-hectare site will be fleshed out with a dozen medium- to high-rise buildings in a connected precinct with more than 800 rental homes.
Approval for the main work is anticipated in mid-June 2026, with construction to progress in stages. First residents may move in by 2028, with final completion in 2029.
carolynannecummins@gmail.com
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