Car washes have always been quite popular investments.

Why is this?  Some occupy substantial sites in good town centre locations and offer small/large scale development opportunities.  What people also fail to understand is they can also be safe investments.  People are always going to have cars and are always going to want their cars cleaned.  This is one of the very few things which cannot be done online (for now anyway)!  The car wash operators have new and regular clients and a constant stream of income.  Therefore they are always able to pay their rent, which in many cases is very affordable.  Also, if one car wash operator goes bust, then it is always easy to replace them with another operator.  It is also easy to replace a car wash tenant with another type of tenant, such as a car site or a builders merchant, who can move in immediately without having to do any work.

As mentioned before, some car washes occupy large prominent sites.  These may have previously been used as car parks or were once buildings which were demolished.  These sites are suitable for a variety of alternative uses.  They can be developed into houses/flats as well as drive-thrus, petrol stations and stand alone retail stores (like Majestic Wine, minimarkets and kitchen/bathroom stores).

Like everything, there are also disadvantages of owning sites occupied by car wash operators.  They can easily go bust, they can decide to withhold rent and developing the site can be costly and take a great deal of time and requires a high level of expertise.