There is a reason established kennels change hands at prices that look high against their profit. Getting a new one approved is somewhere between hard and impossible in most parts of Australia, so the consent is genuinely scarce and the market prices it that way.
That same fact is why the consent is the first document you read, not the fifth. Everything in the business sits underneath it.
The consent and its conditions
Ask for the full development consent, every modification to it since, and every approval, registration or licence the operation holds. Read the conditions line by line.
Approved animal numbers. This is the revenue ceiling and it does not move without a fresh application. Compare it against what the business actually held on its busiest night last Christmas. If they have been running over, you are not looking at a strong trading history. You are looking at unapproved trade that will stop the day you take over, and a compliance exposure that may not have expired.
Hours, noise, waste and screening. Kennels get consented with conditions attached and those conditions are enforceable. Find out whether the acoustic requirements were ever tested, whether the waste water system is compliant and serviced, and whether the landscaping that was meant to screen the site from the neighbours ever went in.
Species and activity. A consent for dog boarding may not cover cats, daycare, grooming, training or retail. If part of the revenue you are being shown comes from an activity the site is not approved for, deduct that revenue entirely, because you may not be able to keep it.
Then write to the council yourself. Ask what a change of operator requires, whether any approval is operator-specific rather than attached to the land, and whether there are outstanding orders, complaints or investigations on the property. Do this in writing and wait for the written answer, whatever the agent says about timing. It is the single highest-value hour in the whole process.
Complaints are a live liability
Ask the council for the complaint history on the site. Noise and odour are the two that close kennels, and a pattern of complaints from one persistent neighbour is a problem that transfers to you with the keys.
A seller with a clean record will offer this up. A seller who deflects has given you your answer.
How to read the occupancy
Do not accept an annual average. It is the number that hides everything.
Ask for occupancy month by month for three years, with peak periods called out separately: Christmas and New Year, Easter, each state school holiday block. Then ask for the same split on average nightly rate.
What you are looking for is which of two businesses this is. A kennel that fills to capacity at peak and sits nearly empty otherwise has demand it cannot serve at one end of the year and a marketing gap at the other, and a new owner has genuine room to work. A kennel that never fills even at Christmas has a reputation problem, a location problem or a pricing problem, and finding out which one takes longer than due diligence usually allows.
If the business runs on Petboost, ask for the capacity and utilisation reporting exported for the full period rather than a screenshot. The same tabs give you average stay length, which matters more than it sounds: a book of fourteen-night holiday stays is a very different operation to a book of two-night weekends at the same occupancy.
What you inherit on day one
Deposits on forward bookings. Every stay booked past settlement with money already taken is a service you provide and the seller was paid for. Get a per-booking schedule: dates, total, deposit held, balance outstanding. Apportion it in the contract. This is standard and any decent solicitor will handle it, but only if you have the schedule.
Unredeemed credits and vouchers. Ask for a customer-level export with a total. In Petboost this comes off the Packages tab and includes value remaining per customer. Note that package credits there do not expire, so a balance sold three years ago is still an obligation.
Staff entitlements. Accrued annual leave and long service leave for anyone continuing. Get the figures per employee and settle who pays.
Bookings taken on a promise. The ones with no deposit and no record, agreed on the phone to a regular. Ask directly whether any exist, because a regular who arrives on 23 December expecting a run that was verbally promised is a fight you do not want in your first month.
The site walk, in order
Take someone who has run a kennel with you. Two hours with an experienced operator will find more than a week of paperwork.
Start at the drains. Floors that fall correctly to a drain with a functioning trap are the difference between a kennel you can clean in an hour and one that smells whatever you do. Re-grading a concrete floor is a rebuild.
Then the fencing, and particularly the double-gating on every route to the outside. One escape ends a kennel's reputation in a country town.
Then the block itself: heating and cooling that works in a 40 degree week and a 3 degree night, ventilation between runs, and whether sound carries so badly that one barker sets off the whole row. Then isolation space for a sick or non-coping dog. Then fire equipment with current service tags, and the evacuation plan, and whether anybody has ever actually rehearsed it.
Ask what the power and water bills are in January. Kennels run hot and wet and the utilities are not a rounding error.
The books, rebuilt
Put a real manager's wage in. Owner-operators of kennels are frequently on-site around the clock and pay themselves in profit. If you will employ someone to do the nights, add that cost, plus superannuation and leave, before you value anything.
Check the insurance. Animal care businesses need cover most brokers do not write, and premiums have moved. Get your own quote rather than accepting the seller's premium as the ongoing cost. Cover for a pet business is its own subject.
Look for deferred maintenance. Ask when the roof, the hot water system, the fencing and the waste system were last done. A kennel that has been coasting towards a sale for three years is a capital expenditure programme you are buying at a profit multiple.
Separate the revenue lines. Boarding, daycare, grooming, retail and transport have different margins and different approval requirements. Insist on them split out.
Walk away if
- The consent capacity is materially below what the business has been running
- The council will not confirm in writing that a new operator can continue
- There is an unresolved order, notice or complaint on the site
- The forward book cannot be produced per booking with deposits identified
- The waste water system is unapproved, unserviced, or nobody knows where it goes
The first ninety days
Keep the staff. In a kennel they hold the dog knowledge, the customer relationships and the routine, and losing two of them in your first month is worse than anything you will fix by changing the roster.
Write to the customer book in your first week, in your own name. Say what is not changing.
Do not raise prices before your first peak. Get through one Christmas, see what the site actually does under load, and then decide. The right way to move prices takes notice and a reason, and neither of those exists when nobody has met you yet.
See Reporting and Intelligence · Petboost for pet boarding · Selling a boarding business