Questions owners in Sunshine Coast ask

No, and the counterparty is not your council. Unitywater is the water and sewerage service provider for the Moreton Bay, Sunshine Coast and Noosa regions, 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. Fees are charged quarterly in arrears and run from $606.00 for a Category 1 very low treatment tier permit to $3,968.00 for a Category 2 permit in 2026-27, excluding GST.

Run the $268.00 trade waste search before contract. It tells you whether a permit exists at all and at what category, and it is the cheapest piece of due diligence in the transaction.

Plan on 30 business days, which is roughly six calendar weeks. Noosa Shire Council requires a food business licence application for a new licensee for an existing business, that is, a takeover, lodged at least 30 business days before the day the buyer plans to operate.

Council will not accept an application until it is complete in full with the relevant documents attached and payment made. Council emails a payment link and assessment proceeds only after full and correct payment has been received. So the clock does not start when the buyer decides to apply, it starts when council has a complete and paid application.

Noosa does not publish its food business licence fee amounts on the pages checked for this research, so no figure is quoted here. Ask council for the current amount before you write a settlement date into a contract.

Not on the Sunshine Coast. Council states that you will be required to apply for a new footpath trading application when you take over the business. Approval is required where tables or chairs are provided on public land for outdoor dining, or where an area is made available to the public to consume food or drinks.

The new application needs layout plans at a suitable scale such as 1:100, coloured photographs of the furniture and site frontage, proof of the food business licence and public liability insurance of at least $20 million. Council warns that expanding the footpath area could change current planning and building approvals.

On the Mooloolaba Esplanade, Ocean Street or Bulcock Street the footpath can be a large share of your seating. If your revenue depends on it, say so in the information memorandum and set the buyer’s application up as a condition, because council does not publish the fee or the permit term.

On the numbers, yes. Noosa held 8,016 actively trading businesses at 30 June 2025 against the Sunshine Coast’s 39,239, and Noosa’s base grew 0.6 per cent over 2024-25 against 2.9 per cent. Noosa runs 134.3 businesses per 1,000 residents against 101.6 on the Sunshine Coast, because of what those businesses are.

The mix is different too. Accommodation and food services is 5.5 per cent of the Noosa register at an index of 1.41, against exactly the state average of 3.9 per cent on the Sunshine Coast. Rental, hiring and real estate services is 15.6 per cent of every business in the shire at an index of 1.34. Health care runs the other way, index 1.14 on the Sunshine Coast and 0.88 in Noosa.

So a growth assumption taken from the Sunshine Coast and applied to a Noosaville business uses the wrong denominator. Have the shire specific numbers ready, because a Noosa buyer will test the growth story harder than a Maroochydore buyer will.

This page will not assert one, because it could not be verified. The Noosa Plan 2020 landing page describes its purpose as guiding the growth and development of Noosa Shire through to 2040 and states no numerical population limit, and the ePlan strategic framework could not be retrieved for this research.

What is verified is the outcome, and the outcome is what a buyer prices. Noosa’s estimated resident population grew 16.1 per cent between 2011 and 2024, from 51,038 to 59,274, against 40.4 per cent for the Sunshine Coast. Its business base grew 0.6 per cent in the year to 30 June 2025. It approved 366 dwelling units in calendar 2024, of which 209 were not houses. There is no priority development area anywhere in the shire, and the whole shire sits inside an 87,000 hectare UNESCO biosphere reserve designated on 20 September 2007.

Use those figures rather than the phrase. They evidence supply scarcity and slow growth at the same time, and both belong in an honest sale document.

Through your customers, yes. In 2021-22, 16.1 per cent of Noosa employee jobs were in accommodation and food services against 9.4 per cent for Queensland, an index of 1.72. That is the highest structural hospitality exposure of the south east Queensland councils covered on this site.

So a cleaner, a refrigeration mechanic, a signwriter, a bookkeeper or a labour hire business in Noosa sells into an economy where roughly one employee job in six is hospitality. In a profit and loss that shows up as seasonality, and in due diligence it shows up as monthly revenue variance.

Present at least 24 months and preferably 36 months of monthly revenue rather than an annual total. A buyer who sees only a yearly figure will assume the worst about the trough months and discount for it.

One of three instruments, depending on where you stand. Sunshine Coast Regional Council administers the Sunshine Coast Planning Scheme 2014, gazetted 2 May 2014 and commenced 21 May 2014. Noosa Shire Council administers the Noosa Plan 2020, adopted July 2020.

Inside the Maroochydore City Centre priority development area, 60 hectares declared 19 July 2013, the Caloundra South priority development area, 2,323.5 hectares declared 28 October 2010, and the Halls Creek priority development area, 1,231 hectares declared 17 July 2026, assessment sits with Economic Development Queensland under the relevant development scheme or interim land use plan.

If your sale depends on a use right, a fitout or a change of use, establish the instrument and the assessment manager first. Sunshine Coast Council publishes Site Report for zoning and Development.i for applications and approvals, both free, and recommends its Development Advice Services before you commit to premises.

Shallower than the population suggests. At 30 June 2024 only 1,649 Sunshine Coast businesses and 351 Noosa businesses turned over $2 million to under $5 million. Above that, 985 Sunshine Coast businesses and 191 Noosa businesses turned over $5 million or more, a combined 2.6 per cent of the 46,103 business base.

The employment profile says the same thing. Non employing businesses were 59.5 per cent of the Sunshine Coast base and 61.4 per cent of Noosa’s. Only 948 and 178 businesses respectively employed 20 or more people.

At $3 million of turnover you sit in a small and identifiable population, and the buyer often comes from outside the region or from trade. That changes how the business has to be documented, how the handover is structured and how long the process realistically takes.

Check what is exiting. In 2023-24 the Sunshine Coast recorded 5,886 entries and 4,944 exits, a net gain of 942. Noosa recorded 1,069 entries and 1,032 exits, a net gain of 37. Exit rates against the 30 June 2024 base were 13.0 per cent in both councils.

The composition matters more than the rate. Of the 4,944 Sunshine Coast exits, 3,785 were non employing, and of the 1,032 Noosa exits, 773 were non employing. That is sole traders opening and closing, not trading businesses failing.

One line in that data runs the other way and it is worth knowing. In both councils exits at 5 to 19 employees exceeded entries at that size in 2023-24, 196 against 121 on the Sunshine Coast and 49 against 22 in Noosa. A business of that size is bought far more often than it is started, which is the buyer pool your own business sits in.

ERA 49, boat maintenance or repair. It is one of five devolved prescribed environmentally relevant activities that both councils administer under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld), alongside ERA 6 asphalt manufacturing, ERA 12 plastic product manufacturing, ERA 19 metal forming and ERA 38 surface coating.

Establish which environmental authority exists, who holds it and how it is dealt with at settlement. Under the general Queensland framework you can apply to transfer an environmental authority for a prescribed activity, but you cannot transfer one for a resource activity. Sunshine Coast Council states that complete applications are processed within 20 days.

Add the Unitywater trade waste permit on top, because antifouling, washdown and workshop waste discharge to sewer will usually require one, and that permit does not transfer at all.

It does if your customers work there, and it is worth quantifying either way. Health care and social assistance provided 43,445 employee jobs on the Sunshine Coast in 2021-22, 15.8 per cent of all employee jobs, 7.5 per cent of every health care employee job in Queensland, and 14,704 more jobs than the next largest division.

Those are weekly pay cycles that do not stop in February. A Birtinya, Kawana, Sippy Downs or Buderim business selling to that workforce has a different seasonal profile from a Hastings Street business, and that is a genuine differentiator in this region.

The flip side is concentration. That employment sits around Sunshine Coast University Hospital at Birtinya, Nambour General Hospital and Caloundra Health Service. If your customer base is that workforce or that supply chain, name the exposure and quantify it rather than leaving a buyer to discover it.

No, and a buyer should not be allowed to assume one. Transport, postal and warehousing is the largest under representation on both registers, 1,679 businesses at an index of 0.57 on the Sunshine Coast and 279 at 0.46 in Noosa at 30 June 2024. It employed 6,964 people and 911 people respectively in 2021-22.

There is no port, no intermodal freight terminal and no distribution corridor here equivalent to the Ipswich Motorway or the Logan Motorway. Freight arrives on the Bruce Highway from Brisbane, and sea freight for the region moves through the Port of Brisbane. Sunshine Coast Airport has a 2,450 metre by 45 metre runway completed in June 2020 that accommodates aircraft such as the Airbus A330 and Boeing 787.

That cuts both ways for a seller. A local courier, tipper, crane or removals business faces a smaller competitor set than in Ipswich or Logan. It also means route density, contract terms and backloading have to be evidenced rather than assumed.

Yes, and the business count badly understates it. Agriculture, forestry and fishing was 1,238 businesses on the Sunshine Coast at 30 June 2024, an index of 0.40, and 278 in Noosa at 0.43. But the 2020-21 Agricultural Census recorded $309.8 million of gross agricultural production value for the Sunshine Coast and $13.6 million for Noosa.

That is roughly $250,000 of gross production value per registered agricultural business. Behind it sit 5,080,898 meat chickens, 1,543 hectares of orchard fruit and nut trees, 23,180.6 meat cattle and 8,912.8 dairy cattle across 82,833.7 hectares of holdings on the Sunshine Coast.

Your customer base is concentrated in five named places: the Noosa Hinterland with 224 agricultural businesses, the Caloundra Hinterland with 164, the Maroochy Hinterland with 143, Eumundi and Yandina with 117 and Glass House Mountains with 104. Crop level values for ginger or macadamias are not published at council level, so don't quote a figure for them in your sale documents.

No, because the funding is not published. The Transport and Main Roads page for The Wave describes the stages, the four new stations at Aura, Caloundra, Aroona and Birtinya, the dual track and the 160 km/h design speed, but contains no information about funding amounts, funding sources or specific completion dates. The delivering2032 venues page names the Athletes Village at Maroochydore, the Sunshine Coast Stadium upgrade from 1,046 to 10,680 permanent seats and the Mountain Bike Centre, and publishes no cost figures or delivery dates for any of them.

What is committed and dated is different. The Beerburrum to Nambour Rail Upgrade Stage 1 is $1.004 billion, with $616.7 million from the Australian Government and $387.5 million from the Queensland Government, main construction commenced November 2025 and completion in 2027 with readiness by early 2028. The Mooloolah River Interchange Upgrade has a State Budget commitment in QTRIP 2025-26 to 2028-29, contract award expected late 2026 and main construction from 2027, but no published cost.

Give a buyer the project, the figure where one exists, the timing and the source, then stop. A buyer who has done their own homework will trust the rest of your numbers more for it.

Yes. The Sunshine Coast is serviced in person, from Caloundra and Birtinya through Maroochydore, Buderim and Coolum to Noosa, and inland through the hinterland. The first conversation is confidential and free.

A mix of local operators expanding, trade acquirers from Brisbane and interstate, and a consistent stream of owner operators relocating for lifestyle reasons. That last group is significant here and they pay properly for businesses that genuinely run without the owner in the middle of everything.

Price is normally a multiple of normalised earnings, moving with owner dependence, customer concentration, recurring revenue, transferable systems and clean financial records. An appraisal against your actual numbers is free and carries no obligation to list or sell.

It is priced, not penalised. Buyers read revenue by month across three years and look at the shoulder season as closely as the peak. A business that trades profitably through the quiet period, with the pattern presented clearly, removes the uncertainty that would otherwise discount the price.

Six to nine months from the appraisal to settlement, of which three to six is the market campaign and contract. Preparation before the appraisal is additional. Most delay is created before the campaign starts rather than during it.