Property auction specialist Allsop Space has set a guide price of €13.5m (£10.7m) for a package of 24 Irish industrial units spread across the country. The assets will be sold as a single lot in a straight sale.
The Project Steel portfolio — predominantly made up of warehouse units located in Dublin, Galway, Mullingar and Monaghan — is being sold on behalf of two receivers, Duff & Phelps and Mazars for a single banking institution. As many as 20 of the units are centralised within three estates.
Combined, the properties cover 389,670sq ft, with several high-profile sitting tenants that include retailers Lidl, Next, Argos and BWG, the operator of the Spar and Mace convenience store brands. Two government organisations are also leasing space: IDA Ireland, the agency responsible for the country’s industrial development, and public health and social care services provider HSE.
Project Steel is also the first of a recent batch of portfolio sales to be exclusively industrial, with units ranging in size from 2,867sq ft to 100,000sq ft. Even though eight of the properties are vacant the portfolio is still claimed to generate an annual rental income of €2,321,769 (£1.8m)
“This portfolio will provide a ground breaking sale in a rapidly improving market,” explained Allsop’s associate director Richard O’Neill. “Project Steel will provide investors with the potential to manage and grow the existing income with the benefit of the capital gains tax exemption — due to expire this coming December — whilst also providing the potential to break up and sell on elements of the portfolio”.
After five years in the Doldrums the country’s industrial market has been improving steadily over recent months. In July an Allsop commissioned survey claimed that capital values in Dublin had risen by around 34 per cent in the past year alone.
And according to CBRE figures, there were 53 individual industrial transactions signed in Dublin between July and September, 20 of them lettings.
The third quarter take-up in the Irish capital reached more than 1.1m square feet, said the real estate services company. Combined with the 916,000sq ft of industrial space signed during the first six months of the year that brings the total take-up to more than two-million square feet for the first nine months of 2014.
CBRE did issue a caution. “These figures represent a strong result, but a similar volume of activity to that achieved during the third quarter will be required again in the final quarter of 2014 if take-up is to match the bumper volume of transactional activity achieved last year,” it said.
