PROPERTY fund IPUT, with some €2bn in investments and which celebrates 50 years in the investment game this year, is seeking to offload three Cork city centre retail investments at the western end of Patrick Street, guiding €9.5 million, or a c 6.15% yield.

There’s a sort of musical chairs series of moves afoot at several of Munster’s TV, audio and white goods retailers this month. As one Cork city centre retailer prepares to move to an edge-of town spot for a larger footprint in coming weeks, the first out of the traps to officially confirm a relocation is the well-known and long-established Soundstore.

After almost a decade in the doldrums, renewed activity is expected across a number of fronts in Cork city’s docklands and quays in 2016, with knock-on effects on major sites downriver in Cork harbour including Marino Point and Ringaskiddy.

Twenty years after it hit national headlines, set political and business shock waves and repercussions that saw Ministerial resignations, tribunals and indirectly the demise of a serving Taoiseach, Cork City’s Horgan’s Quay site is back up for grab, openly this time, by tender.

A Cork City bar near UCC, complete with first-floor, 35-seat cinema, is for sale for €225,000, about the price of a three-bed semi-d, with or without a large flat-screen TV.

A turning tide of development and infrastructure investment, such as the new €200 million N28 Cork Ringaskiddy Road, and €100 million port facility enlargement, may bring a new focus, and a major tenant or two to the Ringport Business Park.

Recruitment firms on the move and in an upward trajectory themselves can be seen as a bellweather of change in the wider economy. Thus, the denizens of Cork’s South Mall will be glad to see the arrival of not one, but two such firms to the South Mall: FRS Recruitment, and IT recruitment specialists Stelfox.

Ever in advance of Port of Cork’s move from sites in Tivoli and Cork city’s docks, the first handful of changes are starting to take place on Cork city’s eastern fringes, either side of the landmark Silversprings hotel - an entity which changed hands itself last December as part of the €455 million Dalata Hotel Group takeover of the Moran-Bewley hotels chain.

An Cearta is set by the Lee Valley, near Inniscarra, seven miles from the city fringes, says Tommy Barker.

Called Ritaville, this Sunday’s Well detached home has a trump card or two up its sleeve – in fact, it’s got something like gem status in local terms.

Bigger than a wedding marquee - that’s the proposed new national Bridal Centre.

A sub-€500,000 price will surely attract investor interest to a South Mall, Cork City centre office investment.

Two waterfront apartment blocks in Cork’s suburban Rochestown, totalling 50 units, are up for sale in one lot, with a guide price of €6.75 million, or an average of €135,000 each. They come to market at time of proven and competitive demand for multi-let investments.

A building on Cork’s South Mall up for let could be a good bet — previous uses have include a stockbrokers on the ground floor and a casino on its upper levels.

A NEW restaurant, Palmento, is opening in Cork City’s Douglas this weekend, as one of Kinsale’s best-known restaurants, Crackpots, is for sale as a 2015 trading opportunity. Crackpots is offered as a going concern for €700,000.

An office investment yielding €42,500 a year in rent is up for sale for €420,000.

An un-named Chinese investor has stitched up a deal on Fitzgerald House, an 11,600 sq ft property facing Cork city’s English Market and adjacent to the dramatically just-painted up Singers Corner, where - coincidentally - a commissioned mural by artist Johnny Bugler depicts a floral Chinese pattern, as seen on old Singer sewing machines.

Further office sales and investments beckon on Cork city’s South Mall traditional offices heartland, hot on the heels of a building investment sale by Allsops last month, for €1.4million.

AS Nama this week brings 588 apartments for sale for €116 million in Dublin, aimed at REITS and overseas investment groups, offers on a smaller scale of apartment blocks maybe of more interest to private buyers conscious of the end of year expiry date of the CGT exemption for investments held for seven years.

A former orphanage property n Cork harbour’s Passage West town, on over seven acres and being sold for the HSE, carries a €750,000 asking price.

A US online custom design and sales firm, Zazzle, is setting up a European HQ on Cork City’s Union Quay, capable of hosting 150-200 employees in an IDA-backed expansion.

AS nine city apartments in one lot go ‘sale agreed’ for over €1m, via Downing Commercial in Cork’s Mahon, a Killarney offer — also of nine quality units — comes to tempt a wide range of investors.

Size: 58-60 sq m (630 to650 sq ft)

A former SuperValu shop, along with other shop units giving a total of 19 retail and office units, is now for sale — for an average of just €26,000 per unit.

Carrying the same sort of guide price as Tony O’Reilly’s nearby summer home — Shorecliff, on six acres — the modern Marine Hotel complex in Glandore is just new to market, compete with 17 holiday units.

A commercial law firm with roots going back to 1870 is to leave its historic Cork City South Mall offices — but is keeping faith with the South Mall location, moving 40 doors away to a building 100 years younger.

THE demand for quality investments continues, with €33m in an office portfolio sale to three separate buyers in Dublin, and with a private buyer paying over €1.5m for a Cork City retail buy, as a pension investment, with a Tesco Express as its main tenant.

Hibernian House is one of the largest office blocks in Cork City’s South Mall and is for sale at c. €4m.

A Bray Tesco Express sale has closed out for €2.7m, indicating a net initial yield of 8.6%.

A RECENTLY let, double-tenanted building on Cork’s suburban Douglas Road, by St Finbarr’s Hospital, is up for sale as an investment, for €1.5m.

It’s like a second town has been built behind the original streetscape of Macroom in mid-Cork, where the former 4Home store has come up for sale and is likely to be bought for convenience retailing.

A NEW sales and letting pitch is to be tried at Cork’s City Square development — the pitch is ‘space for free.’

IN one of the larger industrial deals in several years in Cork, a harbour site with 233,000 sq ft of buildings has been bought for close to €3m, by a waste recycling company.

EAGLE-EYED investors will swoop on a portfolio sale of nine apartments in Cork’s Jacobs Island — in a block called the Falcon.

INTERNATIONAL buyers are expected for a clean, and significantly-sized office investment, which includes major employer Amazon, at the Cork Airport Business Park.

THE office relocation of Landmark Media Investments Ltd, publishers of the Irish Examiner and Evening Echo newspapers, to Blackpool, in Cork, is the second significant office deal in the city in recent weeks.

Cork’s City Gate Park in Mahon today takes a further step towards major IT talent clustering with confirmation of the arrival of hundreds of EMC Corporation jobs to the new office campus.

STRONG covenants, market rents, and an initial yield of 10.7% are some of the attractions of an office investment for sale at Cork Airport.

AN ENTIRE South Mall building, opposite the Imperial Hotel, is coming to market for lease because overhead tenants, law firm Ronan Daly Jermyn, are relocating to City Gate Park in Mahon, Cork.