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This Dublin office block sold for €106 million in 2018. It’s about to change hands for €50 million

Price secured by Savills on behalf of receivers represents 53% fall from €106.5m paid for building in 2018

No 2 Dublin Landings: South Korean-headquartered JR AMC and Hana paid €106.5 million for the block in 2018
No 2 Dublin Landings: South Korean-headquartered JR AMC and Hana paid €106.5 million for the block in 2018

Having sold for €106.5 million in 2018, No 2 Dublin Landings looks set to change hands less than seven years on for about €50 million.

The price being paid on this occasion represents a precipitous 53 per cent fall in value of the 100,546 sq ft office building, which Sean Mulryan’s Ballymore developed in partnership with Singaporean-headquartered Oxley at their wider 1 million square foot mixed-use Dublin Landings development. The amount being paid by German investor MEAG, is also some €10 million less than the €60 million which had been sought by agent Savills when it brought the property to the market on behalf of receivers Deloitte at the end of last October.

The €50 million sale price also falls short of the €60 million plus loan the German bank Helaba extended to the building’s outgoing owners, South Korean real estate investment trust JR AMC and Hana Financial Investment when they acquired the property in November 2018 through German investor KanAm Grund. Helaba engaged Deloitte as receiver to recover the money owed to it in February of last year. The €50 million figure pales even further in comparison to the €140 million valuation which was mooted when JR AMC and Hana weighed the sale of the property in 2022.

A more recent attempt by the owners to refinance the building faltered after its tenant, WeWork, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US last November.

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No 2 Dublin Landings remains fully let to WeWork, which has since exited from bankruptcy following the rationalisation of its global portfolio at the end of May 2024. Under the terms of the process confirmed by the US bankruptcy court WeWork eliminated $4 billion of its pre-petition debt and will save $12 billion (€11.45 billion) in projected lease liabilities.

It has now amended the terms of more than 170 of its office leases and exited from 160 of its locations. As part of that process, the flexible workspace giant negotiated a €1.38 million reduction in its annual rent for No 2 Dublin Landings, bringing the figure from €5.38 million to €4 million. It also handed back the smaller of the six-storey building’s two penthouse top floors, which measures 21,000 sq ft

Ronald Quinlan

Ronald Quinlan

Ronald Quinlan is Property Editor of The Irish Times