Davy investors snap up seven shopping centres for €103m

A fund managed by Davy Real Estate has paid just over €103 million across two deals for seven of Ireland’s best known regional shopping centres.

The fund is understood to have completed the acquisition of the Marshes Shopping Centre in Dundalk from US real estate firm Kennedy Wilson for about €29.5 million. The price paid is €4 million less than the €33.5 million Kennedy Wilson had been guiding when it offered the centre to the market through joint agents Bannon and CBRE in June last year. While the purchase price equates to an approximate 14 per cent discount on that guide, it represents an even steeper discount of 34 per cent on the €44.5 million the US-headquartered real estate firm paid for the Marshes in 2014.

[ Shopping centres for sale: ‘The problem is, who is going to take them on?’ ]

The Davy investors have also just completed the €74 million acquisition of the Hexagon portfolio, a collection of six regional shopping centres built and owned by developer Pat Doherty’s Harcourt Developments. Davy stepped in to buy the centres in Dublin, Donegal, Galway, Laois, Limerick and Louth after two earlier prospective purchasers – Cork-based Lugus Capital and Canadian-headquartered Camgill Development Corporation – walked away from their respective negotiations to buy the portfolio. The Hexagon portfolio comprises Donaghmede Shopping Centre in Dublin; Letterkenny Shopping Centre in Donegal; Galway Shopping Centre; the Laois Shopping Centre in Portlaoise; Parkway Shopping Centre in Limerick, and the Longwalk centre in Dundalk, Co Louth. The price paid by Davy represents a 26 per cent discount on the €100 million which had been guided by agent JLL when it first offered the shopping centres for sale on the instructions of joint receivers Shane MacCarthy and Cormac O’Connor of KPMG.

The news of Davy’s latest €105 million in acquisitions follows its purchase for €9.575 million in April of last year of Eyre Square Shopping Centre in Galway city centre. In that instance, the Davy investors secured a discount of 33 per cent on the €12.75 million Colliers had been guiding when it brought the shopping centre to the market on behalf of US investment giant Marathon Asset Management in August 2021. While the Galway scheme comprises more than 70 retail units and kiosks, the sale was confined to just eight retail units and control of the centre together with the freehold common area units.

Student accommodation: A market plagued by bed shortages, rising rents and 51-week leases

---

An attempt to buy the next election with a giveaway budget would be a gross miscalculation

---

The outlook for interest rate cuts is changing - so should Irish borrowers be worried?

---

IDA gives Intel €30m in aid package

---

In November 2020, a fund managed by Davy Real Estate acquired Swords Central Shopping Centre in Dublin for about €11 million. The price paid on that occasion represented a discount of 49 per cent on the €21.5 million agent JLL had been guiding when it put the scheme up for sale in September 2018.