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A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
From specialist suites near John Hunter Hospital to a family GP clinic in Charlestown or Maitland, a practice is worth what it earns once your own consulting sessions are paid at a market rate. We show every step of that working so your accountant, a buyer or a court can follow it.
A Newcastle medical practice is usually valued by capitalising its future maintainable earnings. We cost the principal's consulting sessions at a market rate, remove one-off items, and divide what remains by a rate built from a risk-free base and practice-specific risk premiums. Comparable Hunter practice sales and the fit-out at market value then test the result.
Most requests start with a change of hands. A GP who built a Hamilton clinic over three decades is retiring, and two of the doctors who work there want to buy it together. A corporate operator has offered a busy bulk-billing practice in one of Maitland's newer suburbs a sale and service agreement. A specialist with rooms near John Hunter Hospital at New Lambton Heights is separating, and the property settlement before the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia's Newcastle registry needs a value for the practice interest. A lender wants an opinion before funding a second clinic in Lake Macquarie, or the accountant is moving the service entity into a new structure and needs a market value the ATO will accept.
Succession in a Hunter practice often happens inside the building. The buyer is commonly an associate, a registrar who trained there or a group that already engages the doctors, rather than an outsider. A valuation shows what the practice earns once your own consulting is costed at a market rate, which is the part an incoming partner is really paying for. It also lets you separate the goodwill you are selling from the price of staying on through a handover, so each can be negotiated on its own terms.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
The Income Approach leads. Patients on a settled list return for chronic disease care, repeat scripts and check-ups year after year, and income that recurs like that is exactly what a capitalisation method measures well.
We assemble the capitalisation rate from its parts instead of borrowing a rule of thumb. Long-term Commonwealth bond yields set the risk-free base. An equity risk premium, a small business premium and a health sector premium sit on top, and a final loading covers what is particular to this practice: reliance on one or two high billers, the lease term left, the split between bulk billing and private fees, and the quality of the records.
One sustainable earnings figure divided by that rate (the discount rate less long-term growth) suits a practice whose next few years will resemble its last few. Where they will not, a discounted cash flow takes over. A Charlestown clinic taking a registrar through to partnership, a specialist group near New Lambton Heights adding sessions at a second site, or rooms whose lease is up for renewal next year are each modelled year by year, which a single multiple cannot show.
We set the earnings result beside sales of comparable practices, expressed per full-time equivalent doctor or per active patient. A handful of close matches from the Hunter and regional New South Wales tells us more than a long list of practices that only look similar on turnover.
Consulting room fit-out, treatment and diagnostic equipment and any procedural or imaging gear are restated from book value to what they would sell for now. That total marks the floor: a profitable practice should never be valued below the net sum its assets would bring.
Two valuers looking at one practice tend to differ most at this step, so each adjustment is written into the body of the report with its reason. The adjustments we make most often for a medical practice are:
Hunter medicine is organised around a few anchors. John Hunter Hospital at New Lambton Heights, run by the Hunter New England Local Health District, is the region's main referral hospital, and the Hunter Medical Research Institute sits beside it, so specialist rooms gather in the surrounding suburbs and on the roads into the city. General practice is spread far wider: long-established group practices in Hamilton and the inner suburbs, busy centres around Charlestown, Lake Macquarie's regional centre, and newer clinics following housing growth around Maitland.
Those differences decide which sales count as comparable. Referral-based specialist suites near the hospital and a five-doctor family clinic in Maitland share a region but not a risk profile, because their billing mix, rent, access to doctors and reliance on one name all differ. Payroll tax cuts across both. Whether payments to contracted doctors are wages under the Payroll Tax Act 2007 (NSW) turns on how the arrangements operate in practice, and Revenue NSW has published its own view on medical centres, so we confirm the position as it stands at the valuation date rather than assume it.
The local business base is deep enough to supply real evidence. At 30 June 2025 the City of Newcastle had 16,296 actively trading businesses and Lake Macquarie 15,181 (Source: ABS, Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits, July 2021 to June 2025). Nationally, health care and social assistance businesses grew 6.7 per cent over 2025 to 2026 (Source: ABS, Counts of Australian Businesses, July 2022 to June 2026, released 18 August 2026). More practices mean more transactions to measure against, and keener buyers for clinics with several doctors and a secure lease.
The report opens with the purpose of the valuation, the standard of value, the valuation date and every document we relied on, noting anything that was missing. It then explains each approach we considered, the method chosen within it, each adjustment to earnings and the reason for it, and how the results were weighted into a final range.
The weighting is where a challenge usually lands. A dispute between practice partners can end up in the Supreme Court of New South Wales, which sits in Sydney, and a property settlement runs through the Federal Circuit and Family Court in Newcastle; in either place an opposing expert will press on why earnings were preferred to sales evidence and why the multiple sits where it does. Where doctors practise together without a written deed, the Partnership Act 1892 (NSW) can decide what interest is being valued, and the report states the basis it adopts. Every report follows APESB, APES 225 Valuation Services, is written with the court's expert evidence rules and the Expert Witness Code of Conduct in mind, and is signed by a certified valuer who will explain and defend it.
Which assumption in my practice valuation would an opposing expert attack first, and what is your answer? If the reply is not ready on the spot, neither is the report.
Choose an Indicative valuation if you want a private benchmark before replying to a corporate approach or pricing a junior doctor's buy-in. It is for internal decision-making and is not written for third party reliance. Choose a Summary report for most partner admissions, retirements within the practice and bank applications. Choose a Detailed report for a property settlement in the Federal Circuit and Family Court in Newcastle, a falling-out between practice owners, or any matter where another expert will review the work.
Pick the depth by asking who will test the number. If a judge, a lender, the ATO or another valuer is likely to examine it, the fuller report is the safer choice.
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.