KGAL Investment Management has two office properties under offer from the €400 mln Dublin portfolio put up for sale by Henderson Park, PropertyEU understands.
Henderson Park appointed Eastdil Secured to sell the ‘Capital Collection’ at the beginning of the year. The portfolio comprised the five most prime offices in central Dublin which Henderson Park acquired last October as part of its €1.34 bn buyout of Green REIT.
Sources said that German fund manager KGAL has secured 2 Burlington Road and 5 Harcourt Road in the bidding process which is still underway.
KGAL is not the only German institution to make a bid for more than one of the five properties. Deka, which recently paid €153 mln for Airbnb’s new Dublin Docklands HQ The Reflector, is understood to have been another.
Two more German fund managers, Real IS and Kan-Am are thought to be competing to buy multi-let 30-33 Molesworth Street from the Capital portfolio.
As well as German institutions, Italian investment manager Generali Real Estate is believed to be have bid to buy at least one of the assets which also include 89,000 sq ft, multi-let One Molesworth Street, potentially the most valuable at up to €140 mln and the smaller Fitzwilliam Hall.
2 Burlington Road is the 83,200 sq ft headquarters of EBS Building Society; all 50,000 sq ft of 5 Harcourt Road is let to WeWork.
European institutional capital is proving the most competitive in the Dublin office market now, displacing Korean and Asian buyers who were largely dominant a year ago.
This trend is also reflected in another transaction in the city centre, the sale of Fitzwilliam 28, Slack Technology’s new headquarters in Dublin 2. ESB Commercial Properties mandated Savills and Bannon to seek €168 mln, a 4.2% yield, for the 12,600 m2 development which completes this summer.
Sources said that German institutional investors Union Invest, Deka and CommerzReal have bid, as has Morgan Stanley as well as French investors Amundi and La Francais. The number and level of bids is expected to drive the yield to 4%.
Union has already been successful in the Irish capital, picking up 5 Hanover Quay for €190 mln last summer from Oaktree, Bennett Group and Nama.
‘This year there is definitely a fight back from European institutions like Deka and Union who are very much part of a wider grouping of European institutions focused on Dublin’, a source said. ‘So a really healthy, solid bunch of investors.’
