Irish properties outperform Europe with €2bn worth of deals in the second quarter of 2022

Investors continue to buy Irish property with almost €2bn changing hands in the second quarter of the year. This contrasts with the European market where investors are cooling and some deals are stalling.

ccording to agents JLL as much as €897m worth of investments were traded in Ireland in Q2 and in addition the Canadian investor Brookfield Asset Management bought Hibernia Reit for €1.1bn, bringing the total for the quarter to €2bn.

That performance was more than double the €763m worth of investments which changed hands in the first quarter.

This second quarter momentum was also reflected in the number of deals with 47 compared with 31 in the first quarter.

“Despite the volatility and uncertainty in the post-pandemic economy, expectations for healthy transaction volumes in 2022 have not tapered in the face of the multitude of challenges that have presented themselves,” said Niall Gargan, head of research at JLL Ireland.

“This is in contrast to mainland Europe where the onslaught of geopolitical and economic obstacles has impacted many large deals leading them to stall or fall through.”

He referenced a €300m-plus deal in Dusseldorf and a €160m deal in Munich.

Explaining Ireland’s outperformance, he cited geographical location, attractive yields, increasing rents in both the office and industrial markets and a rebound in the Dublin office market on the back of some high-profile leases.

Ireland has not experienced the investor hesitancy seen on the continent and he expects some notable large-scale transactions to finalise before the end of the year with over €1.5bn of investments currently on the market and a significant number of assets expected to be brought to the market in the near future.

The Irish residential investment sector also performed well in Q2, accounting for 24pc of the €897m worth of deals.

Offices accounted for 26pc and industrials 20pc.

In addition to the Hibernia Reit deal, another large deal saw LCN Capital Partners pay almost €100m for three redeveloped office blocks occupied by Flutter Entertainment on Belfield Office Campus, Dublin 4. Spear Street Capital was the vendor and JLL the selling agent.

Off-market deals also featured notably with a €98m Dublin residential investment and a €68.5m Dublin industrial property.