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A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Whether it is a new 120-place centre in North Lakes or an older house conversion in Ashgrove, the starting point is what comparable Queensland centres have sold for, checked against the earnings the rooms can keep producing.
A Brisbane childcare centre is usually valued against recent sales of comparable centres, since the sector trades often enough to supply real evidence. We express those sales per licensed place and as an earnings multiple, adjust for the occupancy the centre holds through the year, its quality rating, its lease and any kindergarten program income, and cross-check the result by capitalising earnings after costing a paid centre director in place of a working owner.
A deal or a dispute is behind most of the instructions we receive. A national operator has made an unsolicited offer for a centre in Springfield Lakes. A couple who opened a centre in Logan together are separating, and the Brisbane registry of the Federal Circuit and Family Court needs the business valued at a set date. One of two co-owners in a Redlands centre wants to sell their half to the other. A lender asks for a figure before funding a second site in Moreton Bay. Or the accountant is moving several centres into a new structure and the ATO will expect market value.
Owners also come to us well ahead of a sale. The likely buyers are corporate groups and syndicates who have run the numbers on hundreds of centres, so a seller without an evidence-based figure starts at a disadvantage. An early valuation also points to what is suppressing the price while there is still time to fix it: places that sit empty in certain rooms, a lease running short, a rating stuck at Working Towards, or educator costs inflated by agency shifts.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
The Market Approach leads. Corporate operators, private owners and property investors buy Brisbane long day care centres regularly, so the sales record is a better guide to value than a forecast built from first principles.
The method is guideline transactions. Each sale is screened for its number of licensed places, occupancy, rating, remaining lease, catchment and whether the property sold with it, then expressed per licensed place and as a multiple of maintainable earnings.
Five close comparisons beat twenty rough ones. A purpose-built centre on a new fifteen-year lease in an Ipswich growth estate tells you little about a small centre in an old Queenslander in Paddington with two years left to run, even if both sold in the same quarter.
Maintainable earnings are capitalised after the owner's time in the rooms or the office is costed at the salary of a qualified centre director. Centres that look profitable only because the owner draws no wage are exposed by this step.
Play equipment, outdoor areas, furniture and fit-out are valued at what they would realise today, and the building is added only if the owner holds it. A freehold is a separate property interest, priced by investors on rental yield and by operators on trading.
Normalisation is where valuations of the same centre usually diverge, which is why our reports list every adjustment beside its reason. For Brisbane childcare centres the common ones are:
Where a centre sits in Greater Brisbane shapes how buyers read it. The outer growth areas, North Lakes and the rest of Moreton Bay, Springfield and Ripley in Ipswich, and the Logan corridor, are where large purpose-built centres open beside new housing estates, usually on long leases to investors, and where a new centre down the road can take enrolments before the estate fills. The established inner and middle suburbs, from Ashgrove and Paddington to Bulimba, Indooroopilly and Carindale, have smaller centres on tight sites with long waiting lists. The inner-city ring of Newstead, Fortitude Valley, Milton and Herston serves working parents near the CBD and the hospital precincts, at higher rents.
Queensland adds its own layer to the numbers. Centres are approved and assessed against the National Quality Standard by the Department of Education, the regulatory authority for early childhood services in Queensland. Many long day care centres here also deliver an approved kindergarten program, so part of their income comes through Queensland Government kindergarten funding rather than parent fees supported by the Commonwealth Child Care Subsidy. A buyer will want to know that the program is approved for the service, that the centre can staff it with a qualified early childhood teacher, and how the funding arrangements are likely to change. Council planning approval can also cap how many children a site may take, whatever the building could hold.
Licensed places are a maximum, not a trading result. A centre approved for 90 places that fills 64 is valued on the 64 it can hold, with credit for the gap only where catchment growth and nearby supply make it likely to fill. Demand behind the sector keeps growing: health care and social assistance, the ABS industry division that includes child care services, increased its business count by 6.7 per cent nationally in 2025 to 2026 (Source: ABS, Counts of Australian Businesses, July 2022 to June 2026, released 18 August 2026). For a seller that means more comparable sales to draw on; for a centre in a growth estate it can also mean a new competitor nearby.
The report begins with the purpose of the valuation, the standard of value, the valuation date and the records we relied on, noting any gaps in them. It then sets out each approach considered and the method applied, every normalisation adjustment with the reason for it, and the reconciliation of the results into a range, with the weighting explained in plain English.
When a figure is tested, that reasoning is what survives. A second expert will look first for an unexplained choice: why sales were preferred to capitalised earnings, or why the centre sits at a particular point among those sales. That scrutiny comes in a property settlement in the Brisbane registry of the Federal Circuit and Family Court, or in a dispute between co-owners in the Supreme Court of Queensland, where expert reports are governed by the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld). Our reports follow APESB, APES 225 Valuation Services and are signed by a certified valuer prepared to defend them.
Which of your assumptions would an opposing expert challenge first, and what is your answer? If the valuer can reply straight away, the work has been done properly.
An Indicative valuation is the right first step when a corporate operator has approached you and you want a figure of your own before responding. It is for internal decision-making and is not written for third party reliance. A Summary report suits a sale to an independent buyer, a co-owner buying in, or a bank financing an additional centre. A Detailed report is needed for a property settlement, a dispute between owners, or any matter where an opposing expert will examine the work.
Choose the depth by who will read the report. If a court, a bank, the ATO or another valuer could test the figure, the full reasoning needs to be on the page.
For internal decision-making. Useful for testing an offer, setting an expectation before a negotiation, or deciding whether to go to market. It is not written for third party reliance.
Sets out the approaches applied, the normalisation adjustments made and the reasoning behind the conclusion. The usual choice for a sale, an ownership change or a finance application.
Applies and reconciles all relevant approaches in full. The level required where a court, the ATO, a lender or another expert will review the opinion.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.