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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 two-chair surgery in Palm Beach or a multi-surgery group in Robina, we value the practice on what its chairs dependably earn, and use sales per surgery only to check that answer.
A dental practice on the Gold Coast is valued by capitalising its future maintainable earnings. We replace the principal's drawings with a market wage for the days they spend chairside, take out non-recurring items, and capitalise what remains. Sales of similar practices, expressed per surgery, check the figure, while chairs, imaging and fit-out at their current resale value form the floor.
The trigger is usually a change of hands. An associate at a Burleigh Heads practice is ready to buy half the business and both dentists want a number they can rely on. A dental group has made an approach to an orthodontic practice in Southport. A principal in Coolangatta wants to retire and sell to the associate who has built up the hygiene book. A couple who own a Helensvale practice are separating and need it valued at a set date for a property settlement before the Federal Circuit and Family Court, whose Brisbane registry handles Gold Coast matters. A lender wants a figure before it funds a new surgery in Coomera. Or the practice is being restructured and the ATO will expect any transfer to be made at market value.
Plenty of owners ask for a valuation years before any sale, because it shows what moves the price. How busy the chairs are, how much of the fee base comes from hygienists and oral health therapists, the balance between routine and higher-value treatment, and how much production depends on the principal personally are all things that can be worked on before going to market.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
The Income Approach leads. Patients come back for recall visits and further treatment year on year, which makes the earnings regular enough to capitalise. Buyers think the same way: they pay for what the surgeries will keep producing, not for what the chairs cost.
We use a discounted cash flow when a practice is mid-change: a new surgery being fitted out in Pimpama, an associate being brought on to take over the principal's patients, or a round of chair and OPG replacement due within the forecast period. Each of those shows up year by year in a DCF and disappears inside a single multiple.
Otherwise the method is capitalisation of future maintainable earnings. We work out sustainable earnings from three to five years of normalised results and divide them by a capitalisation rate reflecting how likely that income is to hold once a new owner takes over.
Comparable sales, shown as an earnings multiple or a value per surgery, tell us whether the result is in line with what similar practices in comparable parts of the coast have fetched. A percentage-of-gross-fees rule from a broker is at best a sense check, since two practices with identical fees can have very different profits and risks.
Chairs, OPG and intraoral imaging, sterilisation and the fit-out are restated at what a buyer would pay for them now, not at depreciated book value. A chair written off years ago can still be sold, and the combined value of this equipment sits beneath the conclusion as its floor.
The normalisation schedule is where valuations of the same practice tend to part ways, so we put every adjustment and its reason in the main report rather than tucking them into an appendix. For dental practices the common ones are:
Dentistry on the Gold Coast falls into a few distinct markets, and each one prices differently. Specialist and referral practices, including orthodontists and oral surgeons, concentrate around Southport and the Health and Knowledge Precinct at Parklands, where the Griffith University campus trains dentists and most patients arrive on referral. Older multi-surgery practices with patients going back decades are spread through Burleigh Heads, Palm Beach, Broadbeach and Nerang, and the southern beach suburbs down to Coolangatta have a loyal, often older patient base. The northern growth corridor around Coomera, Pimpama and Hope Island is where new practices open and where dental groups buy to build scale, as young families move in from interstate.
That is why location shapes the comparable set more than the chair count does. Three-surgery practices in Upper Coomera and in Mermaid Beach might bill similar fees and still deserve different capitalisation rates, because population growth, dentist supply, rent and reliance on the principal are not the same. Registration is national, through Ahpra and the Dental Board of Australia, so nothing changes at the state line. Premises arrangements do vary. When the principal holds the building through an SMSF or a family trust, the rent in the accounts is rarely a market rent, and the practice and the property have to be pulled apart before either can be valued.
Over 2025 to 2026 the national count of health care and social assistance businesses grew 6.7 per cent, and Queensland's actively trading businesses across all industries rose by a net 19,244, or 3.7 per cent, to 543,277 at 30 June 2026 (Source: ABS, Counts of Australian Businesses, July 2022 to June 2026, released 18 August 2026). A growing pool of businesses gives more sales evidence to draw on, and more buyers for practices with several clinicians and a long lease.
The opening pages record what the valuation is for, the standard of value, the valuation date and the records we were given, and they say plainly where those records fall short. From there the report covers each approach we considered and the method used within it, sets out the normalisation adjustments one by one with reasons, and reconciles the outcomes into a range, describing the weighting in words.
If the figure is disputed, the reconciliation is what carries it. A report unable to say why earnings were preferred, or why the multiple was placed where it was among the comparable sales, will struggle against a second expert, whether in the District Court of Queensland sitting at Southport or the Supreme Court of Queensland, where expert evidence follows Chapter 11 Part 5 of the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld), or in an experts' conference in a family law case run through the Court's Brisbane registry. We prepare our reports under APESB, APES 225 Valuation Services, and a certified valuer signs each one and stands ready to explain and defend the conclusion.
Ask which assumption an opposing expert would go after first, and how the valuer would answer. If they need time to think about it, the report is not yet complete.
An Indicative valuation is a good starting point if you want your own number before sitting down with an associate or responding to a dental group. It is for internal decision-making and is not written for third party reliance. A Summary report fits an associate buying in, a new partner joining or a finance application. A Detailed report is the level for a property settlement through the Court's Brisbane registry, a disagreement between principals, or anything another expert will go through line by line.
Think about who will read it. The greater the chance that a judge, a bank, the ATO or another valuer will examine the opinion, the more complete the report should be.
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.