Former Fleming Sandymount scheme guides at €80m

Luck, and timing, and what might have been....but that’s no consolation for the Fleming Group, whose costly buy-in €245m site assembly vision for Sandyford on Dublin’s southside is only now coming to fruition, as some of its fruits get sold on again.

The so-called Rockbrook Estate on a site assembled by Bandon-based Flemings in the early 2000s on the Luas Green line at Sandyford comes to market this week, guiding €80m for 270 fully rented apartments, producing €4.15m. It has some commercial elements, plus a site of close to three acres with planning for 416 apartments over basement parking.

Selling agent for the Rockbrook Estate is Dessie Kilkenny of Savills who predicts very wide interest from the likes of Hiberia Reit, Ires Reit, Kennedy Wilson and others given the existing income, and the quality of build using Fleming’s pod construction, with apartments trucked from a factory in Ringaskiddy, Cork, to Dublin, and further development scope for hundreds more units. Flemnig secured planning in 2006 for 880 apartments at Sandford, and up to 50 sold before the market crashed, at prices of up to €500,000.

Savills’ Mr Kilkenny is acting for receiver Pearse Farrell of Duff & Phelps and says the €80m guide price equates to an initial gross yield of 5.2% after standard purchaser’s costs for this offer.

Previously sold here at the 11 acre 2007-initiated site was the incomplete Sentinel Tower, bought for just €1m in 2011 by the Comer brothers and with current planning switched from offices to live and work homes, while the Aldi store was sold in 2012 for €7.7m to an Israeli investor.

Ires Reit bought 63 apartments at Grande Central in 2013, part of a portfolio they acquired last year for approximately €42m.

Now, the Rockbrook Estate scheme extends to 7.7 acres, with two complete residential blocks, Grande Central with 81 units and South Central with 189 as well as The Boulevard, a mixed-use commercial section ideal for further neighbourhood retailing, with Cork retailer EZ already in situ, with three levels of basement car parking, two currently in use. The development incorporates a 2.8 acre partially-developed residential site.

Microsoft employs thousands locally, and this location is close to the M50, N11, Luas Green line, etc. Average monthly rents are heading to €1,250 for one-beds, €1,450 pm for two-beds and €1,850 for three-beds.

Details: Savills, 01-6181401