ByrneWallace lease renewal adds €7m to sale price of Dublin HQ

The decision by leading law firm ByrneWallace to renew the lease on its Dublin headquarters has seen an immediate 16 per cent jump in the price being sought for the property.

Having offered the building, 87-88 Harcourt Street, to the market in mid-February for €45 million, agent Savills has now increased its guide price to €52 million.

The new price reflects the agreement between ByrneWallace and the landlord, joint receivers Luke Charleton and Andrew Dolliver of EY-Parthenon, on a lease extension to April 2032 with no break option and an increase in the rent to €2.45 million per annum. EY-Parthenon are understood to have been advised in the negotiations by HWBC.

The property had been marketed for sale originally with a tenant break option in November 2023 and at a passing rent equating to just €44.39 per sq ft – or €2.37 million a year. The new guide price of €52 million offers the prospective purchaser a net initial yield of 4.28 per cent.

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Working arrangements

Commenting on ByrneWallace’s decision to renew its lease, managing partner Feargal Brennan, said: “With digitisation and new hybrid working arrangements, law firms now need less office space than before, so our plans for growth can be accommodated within the 50,000sq ft we now occupy on Harcourt Street.

“Given local city-centre amenities we believe it still makes sense for us to maintain a substantial city-centre office location, and this location will continue to be an asset when it comes to recruiting new staff and serving our clients.”

ByrneWallace expects to double increase its current employee headcount to more than 600 in the coming five years.

Numbers 87-88 Harcourt Street is a modern office block extending to 53,312 sq ft in a prime city-centre location. The building has a distinctive design with a converted Georgian office to the front and a modern extension to the rear. The front block, extending to 10,051 sq ft has extensive frontage on to Harcourt Street and features a copper-clad roof and granite-pillared portico entrance.

Constructed in the early 2000s, the modern section of the building to the rear, extending to 43,261 sq ft offers views over the Iveagh Gardens.

While fully let to Byrne Wallace, it also has potential for expansion, with a feasibility study recently undertaken identifying the possibility to add two additional floors to the rear block, and extending the existing fourth floor for an additional net internal area of 1,375sq m (14,800sq ft) plus a rooftop garden.