Office site takes off

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

Amazon is in two of the five buildings, taking over 60,000 sq ft and enough space for up to 700 employees, and all five are being sold for €13m, with a rent roll of over €1.6m giving a tempting yield of about 12%.

As well as the five modern buildings, fully tenanted, there’s a three-acre development site with two different plannings on it, suitable for one or two further blocks and this has a separate guide of €500,000. All the buildings, and remaining site, are in the airport park’s Phase II, which is close to fully occupied.

The sale comes after first signs of overseas investment interest in quality investment outside of the capital and into Cork. The sale of a €4m office investment in the city centre (let to Deloitte) for O’Flynn Construction, via Lisney and Savills, to an Australian buyer based in Hong Kong is reported today in these pages as an early example of the broadening of overseas interest in performing quality investments. At Cork Airport Business Park, there’s 120,000 sq ft of quality two-storey buildings being disposed of, at €108 psf or less than the cost of building/replacement.

The park’s phase one was spearheaded by Omnistone, and phase two by Brooklyn Properties, a consortium which included Bernard McNamara/McNamara Construction, Bank of Scotland, and the Dublin Airport Authority. Amazon moved to the park in 2006, with 450 jobs promised in a 40,000 sq ft building, and that number has now grown considerably after they leased a second, smaller adjacent building.

Other tenants are Red Hat, Glaxosmithkline, National Cancer Registry, Hittite and Vertex, and tenants are unaffected by the sale.

Finished in 2007, it is a focus for multinational investment and jobs, and the buildings have raised access floors, good parking etc. Other occupiers include IBM, CITCO, Bank of New York, Aviva and Logitech, and there are two hotels at the park which has a total of 750,000 sq ft of development.

According to Edward Hanafin of Lisney, acting jointly with DTZ Sherry FitzGerald “this is the most significant office investment to be offered for sale outside of Dublin and it is being put for sale in one or more lots.” If the sale is completed before year end the new purchaser will be able to benefit from the Capital Gains Tax incentive which is due to expire at year end. Also on offer at the CABP is a 21,000 sq ft building guiding €2.25m via Savills and Downing Commercial, under active bidding with promise of a 13.8% yield, let to Irish Life and Permanent.

Overseas buyers are currently driving the recovery in the Irish commercial property market, with Savills this week reporting that the Irish investment market by Q3 had topped the €1bn mark — well up on the 2012 figure of €612m. The vast majority of that resurgent activity has been in Dublin, with office investments leading the way. The Cork Airport Business Park offer is the first significant quality office investment outside of the Dublin market to test the waters.

Details: Lisney, 021-4275079; DTZ Sherry FitzGerald, 021-4275454