Questions owners in Redlands ask

No. Redland City Council’s published position is that the approval cannot be transferred, and that on a change of property ownership or a business lease transfer you will have to reapply for a new approval. The application fee is $201.50 for 2026-27, under the Water Supply (Safety and Reliability) Act 2008 (Qld).

Council lists restaurants and cafes, service stations, spray painters, car washes, butchers, commercial laundries, manufacturing, farms, abattoirs, medical services and shopping centres as the business types that need one. If you are in any of those, treat the reapplication as a settlement item.

One detail catches people out. The obligation to apply and to advise council of changes to the business sits with the property owner, not the tenant. If you lease, your landlord is part of this conversation, so start it early.

Yes. Redland City Council issues food business licences under the Food Act 2006 (Qld) and the Food Regulation 2016 (Qld), and the licence can be transferred. The 2026-27 fee is $407.00 plus a pro rata fee, from council’s Register of Fees adopted at the General Meeting of 17 June 2026.

That is a different position from the trade waste approval on the same premises, which cannot be transferred at all. A cafe sale in Cleveland or Capalaba can involve one approval that moves and one that has to be rebuilt from scratch.

Licences run up to three years with an expiry date of 31 October. Check where yours sits in that cycle before you fix a settlement date.

It is an Environmental Health inspection of your food premises, listed in council’s Register of Fees 2026-27 as item HE1.3 at $648.18 plus GST, or $713.00.

It is worth it when your fit out is older or you have never been inspected under the current standard. The inspection surfaces defects before contract, while they can still be priced or repaired, instead of after settlement when they turn into a dispute.

For a buyer it does the same job in reverse. Either side can order it, so decide early who is paying and put it in the timetable.

Yes, for $120.00 in 2026-27. Council administers outdoor dining under Local Law 1 (Administration) 2015 and Subordinate Local Law 1.2 (Commercial Use of Local Government Controlled Areas and Roads) 2015. A new application is $440.00 and a variation is $230.00.

Public liability insurance at council determined levels may be required, so check the certificate of currency matches what council asks for before you lodge.

The contrast is the useful part. Footpath dining transfers for $120.00 and trade waste does not transfer at any price, so do not assume the two approvals behave the same way.

Deep in numbers, thin in balance sheets. Construction was 3,156 businesses at 30 June 2024, 24.6 per cent of the Redland base against 17.1 per cent for Queensland, an index of 1.44. Roughly one business in four in the city is a construction business.

The size profile is the other half of the answer. Only 260 Redland businesses employed 20 or more people and only 866 turned over $2 million or more a year. So there are many potential trade buyers and few with the capacity to fund an acquisition outright.

The same concentration is a risk a buyer will price. Building approvals in 2024 were 86.4 per cent residential by value, $566 million of a $655 million total, so a residential slowdown reaches a large share of the local business base at once.

Yes. At 30 June 2024 only 866 Redland City businesses, 6.8 per cent of the base, turned over $2 million or more a year. In Brisbane City the equivalent share was 9.2 per cent.

Only 148 Redland businesses turned over $10 million or more, and only 260 employed 20 or more people. At $2.5 million you sit in a small cohort with few local comparables.

The practical consequence is where the buyer comes from. Above about $2 million of turnover, the buyer will often be from outside the region, which changes how the business has to be documented and how the handover is structured.

It is, and the numbers say why. At 30 June 2024, 57.5 per cent of Redland businesses were non employing and 88.5 per cent employed fewer than five people. A business that runs without its owner is the exception in this local government area, not the norm.

The trend in the employing tier is worth knowing too. In 2023-24 the 5 to 19 employee band recorded 40 entries against 87 exits, and the 20 or more band 3 entries against 10 exits. Net business formation of 205 sat almost entirely in non employing businesses.

So if you have a supervisor, documented systems and a crew that stays, you are selling something that is genuinely scarce here. Evidence it rather than assert it.

Storm tide. Redland City Plan carries a flood prone, storm tide and drainage constrained land hazard overlay, and unlike an inland local government area the dominant hazard for commercial property here is coastal rather than riverine.

Assessment under Planning Scheme Policy 3 requires modelling of the 50, 10, 5, 2 and 1 per cent annual exceedance probability design flood events, storm tide contour plans to Australian Height Datum at 0.25 metre contours, and reports certified by a Registered Professional Engineer of Queensland. The overlay mapping is published as open data.

That classification feeds insurance premiums, lease terms, fitout replacement cost and business interruption cover. Pull the mapping for your address before you go to market.

Freight, rostering and the ferry timetable. Every good sold on Russell, Macleay, Lamb, Karragarra, Coochiemudlo or Minjerribah crosses water. SeaLink runs the vehicle and passenger services, with a South East Queensland fleet of eight vehicle ferries, eight passenger ferries, one ambulance boat and a cable ferry, operating 365 days a year.

SeaLink is part of the ASX listed Kelsian Group, so you are dealing with one dominant operator whose timetable you do not control. Weinam Creek at Redland Bay is the passenger terminal, with roughly half hourly departures across an 18 hour day using four jet boats.

Show freight as a separate line item rather than burying it in cost of goods. A buyer who can see the crossing cost, the rostering effect and the service call economics can price them. A buyer who discovers them in due diligence will discount for them.

The transition, stated plainly. Sand mining operated from 1949 and was phased out under legislation passed in May 2016, with a final deadline of 31 December 2019. The state response was the North Stradbroke Island Economic Transition Strategy, finalised September 2016 and rebranded Minjerribah Futures in 2019.

Approved funding had reached $39.4 million at 30 April 2024, of which $33.2 million was for projects led by the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation. More than 90 per cent of the island is subject to native title following two Federal Court consent determinations on 4 July 2011, and Naree Budjong Djara National Park covers about half the island under joint management since 2011.

Annual visitor numbers for the island alone are not published in the sources checked. The 1.2 million visitors and $234 million of spend figures are for Redlands Coast as a whole, so do not present them as island numbers.

It affects what you can honestly say about the precinct. Toondah Harbour has been a declared Priority Development Area since 21 June 2013, covering 67 hectares. The Commonwealth Environment Minister announced a proposed decision to refuse the application on 9 April 2024 and it was withdrawn.

Walker Group withdrew from the project entirely on 24 April 2026. Council has said it will work with the Queensland Government, the majority landowner, on next steps.

So the honest position is that the future of the precinct is undetermined as at April 2026. It remains the ferry gateway to Minjerribah and it still carries daily traffic. Sell your business on its trading history, not on a redevelopment that has no partner.

That is not something to guess at, and a buyer will not pay for a guess. What can be stated is the facts. Southern Thornlands was declared a Priority Development Area on 4 April 2025, covering 890 hectares with an expected yield of approximately 8,000 new homes for around 24,000 residents.

Catalyst infrastructure is $544 million: $256 million for road and transport infrastructure, $137 million for sewer upgrades, $29 million for local water supply and $93 million for open space and community facilities. Public notification of the proposed Development Scheme ran 3 August to 15 September 2026.

Because it is a state declared PDA, Economic Development Queensland drives the planning rather than council alone. If your business services new residential construction, put the published facts in the pack and let the buyer form their own view.

Not in the business count, and not in the way the reputation suggests. There were 188 agriculture, forestry and fishing businesses at 30 June 2024, 1.5 per cent of the base, an index of 0.18 against Queensland.

The production figures point the same way. Gross value of agricultural production in 2020-21 was $84.4 million, of which $63.4 million was livestock slaughtered, driven by 3,086,604 meat chickens. Vegetables occupied 52 hectares across the whole local government area and orchard fruit and nut trees 5.8 hectares.

Nursery, cut flower and turf activity does persist, and the state’s Redlands Research Facility at Delancey Street, Cleveland still serves those industries. But if you are selling a horticultural business here, do not assume a deep local pool of horticultural buyers.

More than people expect, before any consultant is engaged. Council’s Register of Fees 2026-27 sets a Commercial Category 1 material change of use, covering office, outdoor sales, garden centre, showroom, hotel and nightclub uses, at $8,069.00 base plus $879 per 100 square metres of gross floor area above 500 square metres.

A service station or shopping centre is $11,895.00 base plus $856 per 100 square metres above 500 square metres. Industrial is $8,069.00 base plus $879 per 500 square metres above 500 square metres.

Where your value depends on a buyer using the premises differently, for example a showroom becoming a food premises, get the application path priced during preparation. A cost that appears mid contract usually comes out of your price.

Capalaba, Cleveland, Victoria Point, Thornlands and the wider Redland City area are all covered. Everything starts with a conversation, by phone, video or over a coffee, whichever suits you. From there we work out what makes sense next, whether that is a site visit, a market appraisal, or simply staying in touch.

Owner dependence. The business works because the owner is in it daily, holds the customer relationships, quotes the jobs and solves the problems. That is a good way to run a business and a hard way to sell one, and buyers discount heavily for it. Twelve to twenty four months of deliberate work on delegation, systems and documentation changes the number materially.

No. Redlands benefits from proximity to the Brisbane buyer pool while often being priced more sensibly than equivalent inner city operations. Presented properly to the right buyers, that is an advantage. The businesses that struggle are the ones that are unprepared, not the ones in the wrong suburb.

With a conversation. The appraisal is free and confidential, and it works from your actual financials rather than a rule of thumb. In that position you are likely to be surprised in one direction or the other, and either way it is better to know now than to find out when you are ready to sell.

That is a legitimate path and sometimes the best one. If you already have an agreed buyer at an agreed price, you likely need a good solicitor and accountant more than you need a broker, and I will tell you that. Where a broker helps is establishing what the business is actually worth first, so the internal sale is priced properly rather than guessed at.