Around €800 million was spent on Irish real estate in the second quarter of the year, bringing to €1.7 billion the capital invested in 2014. Agent JLL said the largest transaction, Project Sapphire, involved the €375 million sale of offices at George’s Quay and Westend shopping centre owned by Cosgraves to Green REIT. In addition, there had been a number of loan sales, including Project Button (RBS), Project Tower (Nama) and Project Drive (Nama) which accounted for another €2 billion. These loans included properties outside Ireland but some of the sale could be apportioned to the Irish volume.

Hannah Dwyer, head of research at JLL, said there was a large supply pipeline for the second half of this year with Nama, Bank of Ireland and Ulster Bank expected to be the most significant sellers. The demand for Irish property assets remained strong with new investors. As a result, they expected total volumes for direct and loan sales to hit €4 billion this year, €600 million more than the peak in 2006. Capital values had continued to increase across all sectors. As prices for offices had continued to intensify, they had seen interest broaden into other sectors with some key purchases this quarter for residential, retail and industrial assets.

Asset packaging

John Moran

, managing director, said that, as predicted, 2014 had been the year of the portfolio sale with a large number of ready sold so far. “We are increasingly seeing vendors packaging assets together for disposal instead of individual lot sales. These are achieving a premium from purchasers with significant interest and competition for these types of assets.”

Meanwhile JLL’s most recent Global Real Estate Transparency Index has found the world’s most transparent markets are still dominated by English-speaking countries. The UK was ranked as the most transparent in 2014, followed by the US, Australia and New Zealand. Ireland is the 8th most transparent, compared to 15th place in 2012.