Questions owners in Moreton Bay ask

No, and the counterparty is not the council. Unitywater is the water and sewerage service provider for the City of Moreton Bay, alongside the Sunshine Coast and Noosa council areas, and its published position is that there are no refunds or part refunds on any permit issued and that permits are not transferable.

The process is set out step by step. You complete and submit the cancellation of trade waste permit form. The buyer completes and submits the apply for a trade waste permit form, and is then sent an account for the annual permit fee. Neither the transfer nor a refund of your unexpired fee is available.

The obligation arises under the Water Supply (Safety and Reliability) Act 2008 (Qld), and a permit is required where a business washes or cleans equipment and discharges to sewer, or produces non-domestic liquid waste containing chemicals or residues. Draft it as a condition precedent in the contract rather than discovering it at settlement.

Yes. City of Moreton Bay issues food business licences under the Food Act 2006 (Qld), and the change of ownership fee recorded for 2026-27 is $533.00. Application and assessment is $704.00 and the annual licence for a category 1 premises is $856.00, or $1,325.00 for a category 1 large premises.

So a cafe sale on Redcliffe Parade or in the North Lakes town centre can involve one approval that moves for $533.00 and one, the Unitywater trade waste permit, that cannot move at any price.

Those fees come from the Australian Business Licence and Information Service record for City of Moreton Bay. Council’s own register of fees could not be retrieved for this research, so confirm the current figure with council before it goes into a contract.

Three, and they behave differently. An environmental authority for a prescribed environmentally relevant activity transfers for $143.10 in 2026-27, and City of Moreton Bay administers it under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld). An authority for a resource activity cannot be transferred at all.

A food business licence, if you hold one for food manufacturing, transfers for $533.00. A Unitywater trade waste permit does not transfer, so you cancel and the buyer applies fresh and pays a full annual permit fee.

There were 1,514 manufacturing businesses in the council area at 30 June 2024, an index of 1.29 against Queensland, so this is a common combination at Narangba, Brendale, Caboolture and Burpengary. Put all three in your due diligence pack yourself rather than waiting for a buyer’s solicitor to find them.

It depends where you are, and there are four possibilities. The MBRC Planning Scheme commenced on 1 February 2016 and covers the general council area. The Mango Hill Infrastructure Development Control Plan covers North Lakes.

Three priority development areas have their own instruments. Moreton Bay Central at Petrie and Kallangur has a development scheme effective 13 October 2025 across approximately 460 hectares. Waraba west of Caboolture, approximately 2,880 hectares, has an Interim Land Use Plan pending a development scheme. North Harbour at Burpengary East, approximately 420 hectares, has an Interim Land Use Plan dated 29 July 2025.

This matters when your sale depends on a use right, a fit out or a change of use, because the assessing instrument and the assessment manager differ between them. Council’s register of fees could not be retrieved for this research, so no material change of use fee is quoted here. Ask council for the current figure.

Deep in numbers and thin in balance sheets. Construction was 7,472 businesses at 30 June 2024, 22.8 per cent of the whole council area business base against 17.1 per cent for Queensland, an index of 1.34. Those businesses are 8.6 per cent of every construction business in the state, in a council area holding 6.4 per cent of the state total.

The size profile is the other half. At the same date, 58.2 per cent of businesses were non employing, only 862 employed 20 or more people and only 2,265 turned over $2 million or more a year. So a trade buyer is easy to find and a funded trade buyer is not.

The same concentration is a risk a buyer will price. When residential construction slows here, the labour hire firms, equipment hirers, transport operators and site cafes slow with it, because construction plus transport plus manufacturing is 36.5 per cent of the base against 28.4 per cent for Queensland.

Yes. At 30 June 2024 only 2,265 City of Moreton Bay businesses, 6.9 per cent of the base, turned over $2 million or more a year. Only 486 sat in the $5 million to under $10 million band and only 412 turned over $10 million or more.

At the other end, 18,522 businesses, 56.6 per cent of the base, turned over under $200,000 a year. That is the band where the business and the owner’s personal income are effectively the same thing.

The practical consequence is where the buyer comes from. At $2.5 million you sit in a small and identifiable population, and the buyer is often from outside the region or from trade, which changes how the business has to be documented and how the handover is structured.

Check what is exiting. In 2023-24 the council area recorded 5,543 business entries and 4,756 exits, a net gain of 787. But 3,875 of the 5,543 entries and 3,487 of the 4,756 exits were non employing businesses.

So the churn is overwhelmingly ABNs opening and closing, not employing businesses collapsing. The employing business exit count in 2023-24 was 1,269 across a base of 13,685 employing businesses.

That is a different signal from a region where employing businesses are the ones turning over. If a buyer quotes the raw exit number against your established employing business, the split is the answer.

The bridge, the age profile and the season. Bribie Island is connected to the mainland at Sandstone Point by a single bridge opened on 19 October 1963, and Caboolture-Bribie Island Road is the only road access. Every delivery, every staff member and every service call crosses that one structure. Whether a duplication or replacement is a funded Transport and Main Roads project could not be confirmed from the project lists checked, so do not build a case on one.

The customer base skews older. At the 2006 Census the island held 16,209 residents with a median age of 55 years, and across the council area 93,852 people, 18.0 per cent of the population, were aged 65 or over at 30 June 2024, concentrated on the island and the Redcliffe peninsula rather than in North Lakes or Narangba.

The trade is seasonal, on a warm months and school holidays pattern. Present the profit and loss month by month, with the freight cost of the bridge crossing shown as its own line, so a buyer can price both rather than discount for both.

It matters to how you read your own trading history. The line from Petrie to Kippa-Ring opened on 3 October 2016 with six new stations, roughly 130 years after a railway to Redcliffe was first proposed. The peninsula was a road only destination until that date.

The project was announced at the 2010 federal election at an estimated $1.15 billion, with the design and construction contract awarded to Thiess at $650 million and a funding agreement signed on 3 December 2010 by the Prime Minister, the Queensland Premier and the Moreton Bay mayor.

If your business trades on Redcliffe Parade or near Kippa-Ring and your records run back past 2016, say plainly which part of your growth sits either side of that change. Do not present pre-2016 and post-2016 trade as one continuous market.

You can state the figure, with its caveats. ABS building approvals for calendar 2024 record $2,375 million of non-residential building approved in the City of Moreton Bay, 15.7 per cent of the Queensland total of $15,094 million, second only to Brisbane at $5,546 million and more than Gold Coast at $1,113 million and Sunshine Coast at $670 million combined.

Non-residential was 60.2 per cent of the council area’s $3,942 million total building approval value in 2024. The composition of that non-residential figure is not published at local government area level, so don't claim in your sale pack what the buildings are.

Building approval values are lumpy and one large approval can move a single year. A buyer will reasonably ask whether your 2024 and 2025 revenue rests on a small number of large projects, so answer that question in the pack before it is asked.

Yes, on the ABS numbers. In the Regional population release for the 2024-25 financial year, published 31 March 2026, Morayfield recorded population growth of 15 per cent in 2024-25, among the three fastest growing statistical areas level 2 in Queensland alongside Ripley in Ipswich at 15 per cent and the Greenbank and North Maclean area in Logan at 14 per cent.

Morayfield held 24,898 residents at the 2021 Census, up from 21,394 in 2016. Across the council area, the estimated resident population was 522,494 at 30 June 2024, with net internal migration of 5,830 persons and net overseas migration of 4,726 persons in the year to that date.

Growth is a demand argument you can evidence rather than assert. Present it with the source and the reference period attached, and let a buyer form their own view about what it does to your earnings.

Probably not, and the business count is why the market misreads this. Agriculture, forestry and fishing was only 884 businesses at 30 June 2024, 2.7 per cent of the base, an index of 0.33 against Queensland.

The value tells the opposite story. The 2020-21 Agricultural Census recorded $299.7 million of gross agricultural production for the council area, of which $212.9 million was crops, produced off 468 hectares of orchard fruit and nut trees and 82.3 hectares of vegetables. For comparison, Redland City recorded $84.4 million in the same census.

A Wamuran or Elimbah horticultural business is not a hobby farm and should not be valued as one. The buyer pool for that kind of asset is national and sometimes international, which changes the marketing plan, the information memorandum and the timetable.

No, because the sections through your part of the corridor are not funded for construction. Anzac Avenue to Uhlmann Road, a 12.9 kilometre section through Deception Bay, Narangba and Burpengary East, has $12 million of business case funding split 80:20 between the Australian and Queensland governments, with planning nearing completion as at February 2026 and construction not funded.

Buchanan Road to Caboolture-Bribie Island Road, covering Morayfield, Burpengary and Burpengary East, has the same $12 million planning arrangement, with detailed design and construction not funded either. That is $24 million of combined planning money and no committed construction funding across the busiest part of the corridor.

What is committed is different. The Dohles Rocks Road to Anzac Avenue upgrade at Murrumba Downs and Griffin is $290 million with main construction commenced April 2025, and the Caboolture-Bribie Island Road to Steve Irwin Way widening was completed in April 2024 at $662.5 million. Travel time reliability through Burpengary and Morayfield is not scheduled to improve on a published date, so do not build a valuation case on it.

Less than the beachfront suggests. Accommodation and food services was 1,033 businesses at 30 June 2024, 3.2 per cent of the base against 3.9 per cent for Queensland, an index of 0.81. That is 5.2 per cent of the state total in a council area holding 6.4 per cent of the state’s businesses.

Headcount runs the other way. Accommodation and food services provided 29,380 employee jobs to residents in 2021-22, 7.8 per cent of the 375,708 employee jobs held, which is roughly 28 employee jobs per business across the year. Small in business count and large in headcount is the classic casual, high turnover roster profile.

The trade is concentrated rather than spread: Redcliffe Parade, Bongaree and Woorim, the Caboolture and Morayfield centres, the North Lakes town centre, and Woodford at year end, where the Woodford Folk Festival draws approximately 125,000 patrons across six days from 27 December to 1 January. Read a hospitality profit and loss here month by month, because a twelve month average will mislead in both directions.

All of it. Brendale and Narangba through to North Lakes, Mango Hill, Caboolture, Morayfield and the Redcliffe peninsula. Everything starts with a conversation, by phone, video or over a coffee, whichever suits you. From there we work out what makes sense next.

Trade services, civil, earthmoving and building businesses that have grown alongside the residential expansion are attracting real buyer interest. So are home improvement and interiors businesses, provided revenue is not concentrated in a handful of builder relationships. Buyers are actively looking for operators with capacity and contracted work.

Customer mix first, particularly reliance on a few builders versus retail trade. Then installation capacity, because revenue in that sector is limited by how much you can measure, make and install rather than how much you can sell. Then supplier arrangements and whether they transfer, and whether lead generation keeps working without the owner driving it. This is a sector I have run at general manager level rather than only sold.

Book a free confidential appraisal. Thirty minutes, no obligation, and nobody finds out you asked. You get a realistic market range with the reasoning behind it, the specific things a buyer would question, and a view on what could be improved in the next twelve to twenty four months.

You deal with me directly, start to finish. No assistant, no call centre, nothing handed off. Behind that sits a register of buyers who have already told me what they are looking for, but the work on your business is mine.