Welcome to the Origin Capital Weekly Irish Property Review. This update is designed to provide you with a full recap of the latest property news from the media over the last seven days.
HOSPITALITY
Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 Lisney is seeking a buyer for the Schoolhouse Hotel on Dublin’s Northumberland Road. The 31-bedroom venue is being offered to the market as a going concern at a guide price of €12m, which equates to €387,096 per key. Built originally in 1859 as St Stephen’s Parochial School, the building was restored and converted into a four-star hotel in 1998. A number of the building’s original features have been preserved, including its distinctive redbrick facade, its arched windows, and high ceilings. The hotel comprises 31 guest rooms, a gastrobar, landscaped gardens and 24 on-site car-parking spaces. The Irish Times, 21st October
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Earl Place, Dublin 1 Located just off O’Connell Street, the 229-bedroom Premier Inn Dublin City Centre Hotel, now under construction and nearing completion is being offered for sale. Fully let to PI Hotels & Restaurants Ireland Limited, with Whitbread Group plc as guarantor, the guide price of €66.6m reflects a NIY of 5%. The lease runs for 30 years from practical completion on a full repairing and insuring basis, with no break option, CPI-linked rent reviews with a cap and collar. The hotel is set to be highly sustainable with an A2 Ber rating. Offers are being invited by JLL on the basis of a completed hotel, with sale completion and lease commencement expected in Q1 of 2027. The Irish Times, 21st October
Parnell Street, Dublin 1 Telstar Investments Limited, led by Noel and Ross Murray, is lodging plans to turn the former Neary’s hotel into a café, bar and residential accommodation. The group is seeking to renovate 76-78 Parnell Street, which would include converting the vacant section of the ground floor to a café, as well as changing the use of the first floor across the three properties from a hotel to a bar and restaurant. In addition, the group is also seeking to convert the second and third floors of the former hotel into six studio apartments. Telstar Investments said the site forms part of a connecting group of buildings in its legal interest which includes 33-35 O’Connell Street, Circle K at 36 O’Connell Street, and Fibber Magees and The Gate Hotel at 80-81 Parnell Street. The Business Post, 23rd October
Naas Road, Dublin 22 Bridgestock Care is in exclusive talks to acquire the 150-bed former Ibis Red Cow Hotel. The value of the deal is more than €20m, according to sources. While some had speculated the site would be attractive to developers or hoteliers, a sale to Bridgestock indicates the hotel is almost certain to remain an Ipas centre. The property has an existing contract with the Department of Justice for asylum accommodation, estimated to be worth about €600,000 pa. Savills ran the sales process for Interpath, who was appointed as receiver by BCM Global to a company connected to the former hotel in 2023. The hotel, now known as the X8, is being used to accommodate around 300 asylum seekers as an Ipas centre. It also has a bar and lounge with capacity for 120 people. The Business Post, 25th October
OFFICE
North Wall Quay, Dublin 1 PwC is exploring plans to move its Irish headquarters from Dublin’s docklands after nearly 20 years. PWC, which employs 3,500 people in Ireland, has hired Cushman and Wakefield as it considers relocating from its North Wall Quay offices when the lease expires in 2032.The firm is seeking between 150,000 sq. ft and 200,000 sq. ft of office space if it does move. PwC has occupied the nine-storey office, known as One Spencer Dock, since April 2007. One Spencer Dock, which has an overall floor area of 226,624 sq. ft comprises of three interconnecting blocks and was acquired in 2016 by London-based AGC Equity Partners, which acted on behalf of Middle Eastern investors, for €242m. A sale of the building has been considered on several occasions since, most recently late last year, when the Irish Times reported it was being marketed by joint agents JLL and CBRE at a guide price of €170m. The Business Post, 22nd October
Retail
Kilmacanogue, Co. Wicklow and Rathcoole, Co. Dublin Having paid approx. €22m to acquire two of Avoca’s flagship premises from Aramark in 2017, Signature Capital is now looking to dispose of the properties. The two properties are being offered to the market by JLL and TWM, fully let to Avoca until 2047, with Aramark as guarantor, at a guide price of €29m. Avoca Kilmacanogue comprises a premises extending to 27,663 sq. ft on a landscaped site of 15.79 acres. Avoca’s Rathcoole outlet comprises a three-storey building of 42,668 sq. ft on a site of 3.95 acres with frontage to both the N7 Naas Road and Fitzmaurice Road. Both the Kilmacanogue and Rathcoole properties are let on long-term leases with 21 years left until expiry. The tenant is currently paying total annual rent of €1,680,000. Rent reviews occur every five years and are linked to the Consumer Price Index (“CPI”), subject to a 3.5% annual cap and -0.5% annual collar, compounded annually. Aramark acquired the Avoca business from the Pratt family in a €51m deal in 2015. The next CPI rental uplift is due in September 2027, with the rent payable increasing to €2m at that time. The vendor is providing a rental underwrite to ensure that the incoming owner will secure a yield of 6.2% based on the asking price of €29m. The Irish Times, 21st October
For lending terms on this asset please contact rossmetcalfe@origincapital.ie
Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin Burke Kennedy is quoting €2.5m for the corner property at 1 Upper Georges St and 111 Patrick St in Dún Laoghaire. The property generates €150,500 a year and a vacant second-floor offers further rental potential. It is being sold by the Shannon family who operated the Facet retail and manufacturing jewellery business from the store for decades. Following their retirement, in 2024 they rented out the 2,200 sq. ft ground and basement levels of the George’s Street premises to a business which has continued to trade with their Facet brand and has a 10-year lease. On the first floor of this premises, 1,100 sq. ft is let to an education company on a four year and nine-month lease due to expire in autumn 2029. Its 1,485 sq. ft top floor, which has been offices, is vacant but could generate €26,000 a year. Subject to planning permission, the floor could return to residential use. At 111 Patrick St, this 1,700 sq. ft section of the premises is let as a beauty and spa salon on a 10-year lease until 2035. The Irish Independent, 22nd October
For lending terms on this asset please contact rossmetcalfe@origincapital.ie
INDUSTRIAL
Huntstown Business Park, Dublin 11 Having relocated to a new and larger food storage and distribution facility at Huntstown Business Park, P&B Foods has completed the sale of its former premises at the Dublin 11 scheme. The company secured €7.35m from the sale of Cobalt House to an Irish owner-occupier company. The price paid equates to a capital value of €234 per sq. ft. Cobalt House comprises a detached warehouse of 31,422 sq. ft and includes 4,877 sq. ft of two-storey office accommodation. The property has a secure, gated and fenced yard with depths of 36-40m, 24 car-parking spaces to the front with loading provided via two dock levellers and one level-access door. Harvey represented P&B Foods in the transaction while BNP Paribas Real Estate acted for the purchaser. The Irish Times, 21st October
St. Margaret’s, Co. Dublin Keelings has engaged Finnegan Menton and Cushman & Wakefield for the latest phase of lands at FoodCentral, the 280 acre food industry park it owns at St Margaret’s near Dublin Airport. The scheme, which is dedicated to companies operating in the food, drinks and flowers sectors, currently comprises more than 2m sq. ft of food-industry accommodation. The latest phase of development lands being released for sale or letting comprise 41 acres in total. The available sites range in size from 2.95 acres to 28 acres while permissible building sizes are from 20,000 sq. ft to more than 300,000 sq. ft, subject to planning permission. The joint agents are guiding a price of €600,000 an acre for sites of five acres or larger in the current phase. The launch of the latest sites at FoodCentral comes as Dixon Transport nears the completion of the fourth phase of development at its facility since locating there in 2015. The latest phase comprises a fully automated ambient and temperature-controlled distribution centre of 110,000 sq. ft immediately adjoining a slightly larger sized facility completed in mid-2024. Dixon’s facilities at FoodCentral will extend to more than 300,000 sq. ft once the current works are completed. The Irish Times, 21st October
RESIDENTIAL / DEVELOPMENT
Ballyphelane, Cork City Cairn Homes is seeking to scrap a series of duplex buildings from its plans for 606 homes on the Cork site it bought for more than €25m last year. The homebuilder has lodged plans with Cork City Council seeking several changes to its Creamfields development on the Kinsale Road, which, if successful, will result in 63 additional homes on the brownfield site. The changes will result in a total of 122 one- and two-bedroom units for the development’s southern site, reflecting an increase of 63 homes. This, Cairn said, would bring the total number of units at Creamfields to 669 units. The 606 approved homes comprise 352 apartments and 257 build to rent apartments, with a landmark residential tower spanning 15 storeys also included in the scheme. The Business Post, 20th October
Clondalkin, Dublin 22 Hines is one step closer to building a €700m residential development, consisting of between 1,400 and 1,600 homes at the Liffey Valley shopping centre in west Dublin. Last week South Dublin county councillors agreed to adopt variations to the development plan, which have now rezoned Liffey Valley shopping centre to include residential homes. Hines wants to develop the homes on a nine-hectare site at Liffey Valley, which it owns jointly with the Swiss pension fund BVK. Some of the apartments would be built on top of a €20m bus station, which opened at the shopping centre in 2023. Prior to the change to the development plan, the area around the Liffey Valley mall was zoned as an urban town centre, not for residential housing. The plan to rezone the lands at the shopping centre did not receive many negative submissions from locals. However, there were thousands of objections submitted against proposals to rezone land at Finnstown Castle near Lucan, Coldcut Road in Adamstown and at St Edmundsbury, a 97-hectare site in the Liffey Valley area. The Sunday Times, 25th October
OTHER
Nationwide Development land deals reached €106m in Q3, which was broadly in line with last year. Twenty deals completed at an average size of €5m, with 228 acres trading. Year-to-date volumes now stand at €543m, well ahead of the figure of €337m over the same period a year ago. The average price paid per acre stood at €464,100 in Q3, which was below the five-year average of €655,500. 41% of volumes transacted with planning permission in place, which was slightly below the five-year average of 48%. In acreage terms, however, 18% of deals included planning permission, compared with a five-year average of 27%. This relatively low share was despite a 21% y/y increase in permissions granted for new construction in H1. The largest deal was the Religious Sisters of Charity’s €45m sale of 13.3 acres at St Mary’s Campus, Dublin 4, to the HSE. Despite not having planning permission in place, the mixed-use scheme sold for 13% above the asking price. The second-largest transaction concerned the €18m sale of 7.2 acres at Aiken’s Village, Dublin 18. The greenfield site has full planning permission for 209 own-door residential units. The third largest deal was P&C but concerns the sale of an 18.0 acre residential site for €9m. The site includes planning permission for 302 units. Savills Quarterly Report, 20th October