Finance to buy a laundromat: how to fund the machines, the lease and the goodwill

Finance to buy a laundromat isn’t one loan. It’s usually three, because the asking price bundles together things that lenders treat very differently: commercial washers and dryers you can touch, a goodwill figure you can’t, and a lease that decides whether either is worth anything.

Get the split right and the deal gets easier to fund. Get it wrong and you can end up paying a long-term price for machines that are twelve years old.

Here’s how to break a laundromat purchase into pieces, match each piece to the right loan, and run the checks that most buyers skip.

What are you actually buying when you buy a laundromat?

Listings usually give one number. Behind it, there are four parts:

Part of the price	What it is	How lenders see it
Machines and fit-out	Washers, dryers, payment systems, signage, benches	Real assets with a resale value, but that value falls with age
Goodwill	The established customer base, the location, the trading record	Hard to lend against; needs profits to support it and often extra security
Stock	Detergent, vending items, consumables	Small, usually valued at settlement
Lease position	The right to keep trading from the site	Not an asset you can sell, but a lender won’t proceed without enough term left

The contract should state how the price is allocated between these. That allocation matters for finance and for tax, so ask for it in writing early. Our guide to financing goodwill when you buy a business goes deeper on the goodwill piece.

Which loan funds which part of the purchase?

Match the finance to what it’s buying, as in our guide to matching the loan to the job.

Piece	Loan shape that often fits	Why
The machines	Equipment finance, or a refinance of finance already on them	The machines secure the loan themselves, and the term can follow their working life
Goodwill	Business acquisition loan, property-backed loan, vendor finance, your own cash	Needs more than the goodwill itself as support
Working capital and the first months	A small buffer built into the loan, or a line of credit once you’re trading	Covers rent, water, repairs and wages while takings settle
Replacing tired machines	Equipment finance, after you’ve seen the repair history	Spreads the cost over the machine’s useful life

Unsecured business loans (typically $5k to $500k, sized on turnover and bank statements) can help with smaller deals, but they lean on trading history, so they’re often more useful after settlement than for the purchase itself.

Not sure which mix suits your deal? The loan matcher gives you a starting point, or you can talk it through with a real person before you make an offer.

Do the machines already have finance on them?

This is the check that saves buyers the most grief. Laundromat equipment is often financed, leased or on a rent-to-own agreement, and in a sale that finance either gets paid out or passes to you.

Before you sign:

1. Search the PPSR. The Personal Property Securities Register is a national online database showing whether someone claims a security interest in goods. The PPSR itself recommends searching before buying valuable second-hand goods, and the search gives you a certificate you can keep as proof of what was registered at that time.
2. Search the right name. Search the selling company, or the individual if it’s a sole trader. An all-assets registration by a lender can cover the machines even if they aren’t listed individually.
3. Get payout letters. For any registered finance, ask for a written payout figure and confirmation that the security will be released at settlement.
4. Read the machine agreements. If machines are on rent-to-own or a supplier agreement, check the remaining term, the buy-out price and whether the supplier must consent to a transfer.
5. Make it a contract condition. Settlement should be conditional on clean title or on agreed payout arrangements.

If you’re refinancing the machines yourself, a lender will also want to know the age, make and model of each unit, which is why asking the seller for a machine list early helps.

What do lenders check in a laundromat’s numbers?

The business sells a simple product, which makes the evidence easy to read. Expect lenders to ask for:

• Two or more years of financial statements and BAS. These show profit, GST and whether the reported turnover matches reality.
• Business bank statements. For a cash and card business, the takings should show up consistently in the account. Takings that don’t match the books are a red flag.
• Machine age and repair history. Costs for repairs and replacement parts show how much capital the machines will soak up.
• Utilities. Water, power and gas are major costs; the last 12 months of bills show what the site really costs to run.
• The lease. Remaining term, options to renew, rent reviews and whether the landlord will assign the lease to you.
• Your experience and contribution. Laundromats look simple but have fiddly operations; any related experience helps, and so does cash in the deal.

If you’re weighing a purchase price against profit, the sums in our goodwill guide (how many years of profit it takes to repay the price) apply here too.

What about trade waste, the lease and other deal-breakers?

Some of the biggest risks in a laundromat never appear in the takings.

Trade waste. Water authorities regulate what businesses discharge to the sewer. Sydney Water, for example, says businesses need its written permission before discharging trade wastewater and that unapproved discharge can lead to disconnection. Other utilities say approvals can’t simply be transferred to a new owner and want notice of the change. Rules differ by state and utility, so ask the seller for the current approval and ask the utility, before settlement, what the new owner must do.

The lease. A lender will rarely fund a purchase if the lease is nearly up. As a rule of thumb, you want enough term and options to cover the loan period, with a clear right to assign. A lease that runs out in two years undermines both the goodwill and the machine finance.

Installation and make-good. Heavy machines need plumbing, drainage and power. Check what’s fixed to the building and what you’d be liable to remove at the end of the lease.

Depreciation. The ATO says its practice of publishing effective lives in rulings has ended, and that TR 2022/1 was withdrawn from 31 October 2025, with the Income Tax (Effective Life of Depreciating Assets) Determination 2025 continuing to apply. So check the current determination, or ask your accountant, rather than relying on old tables.

What does a laundromat deal look like in practice? (illustrative)

This example is made up to show the moving parts. It isn’t a real client.

Priya is buying a suburban laundromat for $400k. The contract splits the price like this:

Item	Value
Washers, dryers and payment system	$170k
Fit-out and signage	$30k
Stock	$5k
Goodwill	$195k
Total price	$400k

A PPSR search shows $60k still owing on some of the dryers. The seller agrees to pay that out from the sale proceeds at settlement, with a written payout letter.

Priya’s funding mix looks like this:

• $120k equipment finance over the working life of the machines.
• $80k of her own cash.
• $150k property-backed loan using equity in her home, to cover most of the goodwill.
• $50k vendor finance, repaid over 12 months, which also keeps the seller engaged through the handover.

That’s $400k. She also holds back a separate buffer for legal costs, duty where it applies and the first months of rent and utilities. Sizing that buffer is exactly what the cash-flow gap estimator is for.

Notice what the split did: the machines carried their own finance, and the goodwill gap was covered by cash, equity and the seller. No single loan had to do an impossible job.

Is the tax side different for a laundromat?

A few points to raise with your accountant before you sign:

• GST. Most business sales are structured as a GST-free going concern if the conditions are met. Our guide to GST when buying a business explains how that works.
• Instant asset write-off. For small businesses with aggregated turnover under $10 million, assets costing less than $20,000 each can generally be written off in the year they’re first used or installed ready for use. The ATO’s page says this threshold was extended to 30 June 2026 and that the government announced it would become permanent from 1 July 2026, so check its current status. When you buy a whole business, ask whether the individual machines qualify.
• Allocation. Equipment is generally depreciated, while goodwill is generally treated as a capital gains tax asset. The split in the contract affects both.

The business.gov.au page on buying an existing business is a good checklist for the due diligence steps before you commit.

How do you get the deal ready for a lender?

1. Get the numbers in writing. Financials, BAS, bank statements, machine list and the lease.
2. Run the PPSR search and ask for payout letters.
3. Confirm trade waste and lease assignment with the utility and landlord.
4. Decide your own contribution and what property equity you can use.
5. Plan the buffer. Rent, utilities, repairs and wages for the first quarter.
6. Talk to a lender before you make an offer, so the contract’s conditions and dates match what can actually be funded.

Ready to see how your laundromat purchase could be funded?

Buying a laundromat is a great way to step into a business with regular takings and real equipment behind it. The trick is funding it in pieces that make sense, rather than hoping one loan covers everything.

If you’d like to see how the machines, the goodwill and your first months could fit together, we’d love to help. Check your options here. The enquiry takes about 60 seconds, and it doesn’t involve a credit check, so asking won’t touch your credit file. We don’t send your details out to a pile of lenders. A real person reads your situation and phones you to talk it through. And please fill the form in accurately, including what’s owing on the machines and what the lease looks like, so we can match the right option first time.

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