Buy & sell a nightclub and table-dance club

A club operation generates music inside and traffic outside. Both are assessed under environmental noise law, and both are judged very differently depending on whether residential development or a commercial zone begins next door. Properties in pure commercial locations with no residential neighbours are, for this reason, the far more robust choice.

Closing hours (Sperrzeit) are set by the local authority. They can be shortened or extended and are therefore a factor that can shift with local politics. Anyone buying a property whose business case depends on late opening hours should get the current position confirmed in writing from the authority rather than relying on verbal assurances.

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.

As soon as drinks are served, catering law applies, with its own permit, its own reliability check and requirements for kitchen, storage and staff toilets. If the site has already been through a catering-use procedure, that is a tangible advantage over a property where this route is only just starting.

On the structural side there is also: escape route widths matched to the permitted visitor numbers, ventilation capacity for the main room, sanitary facilities in the required ratio, and an electrical installation that can carry lighting and sound equipment.

Nightclubs are frequently sold together with their contents. It is important to separate the property and the moveable inventory cleanly: stage technology, sound system, bar and kitchen fittings belong in their own list with their own valuation, because they are treated differently for tax and legal purposes than the building.

It should also be clarified whether the brand, domain, social media accounts and guest data are meant to be part of the deal. With guest data, caution is required: transferring it is not straightforwardly permissible under data protection law and should be checked by a lawyer.

The terms overlap: buy a nightclub, buy a strip club, sell a strip club, buy a table-dance club, table-dance bar or night bar mostly mean the same property in practice, a catering business with a stage, a bar and a late finish.

For due diligence, the label is secondary. What matters are the catering licence, the local authority's closing hours, the noise situation with regard to neighbours, and whether sexual services are also provided on the premises, in which case the Prostitutes Protection Act comes into play with its own separate permit.