Buy & sell a naturist and sauna club

A sauna club keeps water at temperature, moves large volumes of air and copes with permanent humidity. Pool circulation and filtration, sauna heaters, hot water production for many simultaneous showers, ventilation with heat recovery, plus waterproofing that keeps moisture permanently contained in wet areas: this is the difference between a club that works and one that is a permanent building site.

When buying, the age of the plant belongs in the due diligence: when was the pool technology last renewed, how old are the sauna heaters and heat generators, are there maintenance records, and what are the actual annual gas, electricity and water consumption figures. These numbers say more about the next five years than any description of the fit-out.

Currently on offer is a detached commercial building in Villingen-Schwenningen: 576 sqm of lettable space on a 1,064 sqm freehold plot, nine rooms, seven of them with en-suite bathroom and WC, plus a Finnish sauna, an XXL whirlpool, a cold-plunge pool, a bar, a club room, a cinema room, a mirror room, a covered inner courtyard, eight parking spaces and two garage spaces. The building has been run continuously since 1991 as a naturist sauna club and prostitution establishment and is free of existing leases or tenancies. Purchase price €848,000.

A new site needs a plot in a commercial zone with no residential neighbours, a building authority prepared to support the use under planning law, rooms that meet the requirements of the Prostitutes Protection Act, and fire safety that survives inspection. Each of these hurdles costs time, and several of them regularly founder on local politics.

That is why, in this segment, existing properties change hands almost exclusively. A building with a track record, orderly permit documentation and a completed fire-safety procedure is therefore not just a property but a position that is hard to recreate.

Both routes are possible. Anyone operating it themselves needs their own permit under Section 12 ProstSchG, a workable operating concept and staff. Anyone leasing it out needs a tenant who passes that check, and a lease that clearly allocates maintenance, responsibility for plant and operating costs.

With a sauna club in particular, it is worth regulating responsibility for building services precisely in the lease. Pool damage and ventilation failures are expensive and, without clear rules, reliably lead to disputes.

Searches such as buy an FKK club, buy a sauna club, sell a sauna club, or take over an FKK club almost always lead to the same few properties, because little stock trades in this segment. Anyone wanting to sell therefore meets a receptive but very exacting market.

Exacting means interested parties ask first about plant, consumption and permit status, not about the fit-out. A seller who has maintenance records, annual statements and fire-safety documents ready significantly shortens the process.