Dublin in top 3 European property investment cities

Dublin has been ranked in the top three European cities for real estate prospects for the third year running.

A PwC report into emerging trends for 2016 in the European property market puts Dublin third behind Berlin and Hamburg as the most likely to attract further capital and investment.

“Sentiment remains very positive for Dublin.

"Investment is coming from a pretty broad spectrum of investor types — hedge funds, private equity players, pension funds, retail investors, wealth management, sovereign wealth and larger insurance companies,” said PwC Ireland real estate partner Enda Faughnan.

“Distressed bargains are no longer the attraction.

"We are seeing real demand from overseas companies setting up in the city centre.”

“Further value enhancement will be driven by rental growth.

"There has been a pretty rapid recovery and people are seeing a real shortage of prime office space in Dublin,” said PwC’s Tim O’Rahilly.

“There is also a huge shortage of new residential units and, with prices expected to continue to increase, purchasing is out of reach for a lot of people.

"We are seeing significant institutional investor interest in buying end product and the expectation is that this will continue for the medium term.”

Meanwhile, as part of its outlook for the Irish commercial property market for 2016, CBRE yesterday said the Irish sector is now about to move into “the next stage of recovery, with a significant escalation in development activity becoming increasingly evident”.

New data from CBRE show that nearly 180 investment transactions greater in value than €1m were concluded in the Irish market during 2015.