Irish Life pays €35m for Dublin office block it sold for over €100m

Irish Life has bought back Hume House in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, for €35 million – 10 years after it sold the office building for more than €100 million.

The renewed interest in the high rise block on Pembroke Road stems from its redevelopment potential and its pivotal location next to the major new mixed-use urban centre being developed by the Comer Group and a consortium headed by Joe O'Reilly's Chartered Land.

Irish Life previously owned Hume House from the 1970s until 2006, when it sold it to developer Seán Dunne for more than €100 million as part of a larger transaction. At that time Mr Dunne was involved in a major site-assembly programme in Ballsbridge which collapsed when the property market crashed.

As a result, Hume House and a number of other distressed assets belonging to Mr Dunne were sold in 2014 by the National Asset Management Agency as part of the Platinum portfolio and bought by the US private equity firm Blackstone.

Just over a year later it flipped two of the office buildings and announced plans to sell Hume House at an expected price of more than €40 million. A London-based investment company had apparently been in advanced discussions in early summer with selling agent Johnny Horgan of CBRE to buy the property but suddenly and unexpectedly withdrew after the Brexit vote.

Irish Life will undoubtedly regard the repurchase of Hume House at €35 million as a considerable coup given the inflated selling price in 2006, the current shortage of high-quality office space in the central business district and the prospects for redeveloping the block in the longer term.

Urban transformation

Martin O’Reilly, head of property at Irish Life, said yesterday they were delighted to have reacquired Hume House at a time in its life cycle which was perfectly aligned with the dramatic urban transformation unfolding in the Ballsbridge area and to benefit from the exceptional level of office occupier demand for the location.

The planning for Hume House will allow for the redevelopment of the entire site which extends to 0.35 of a hectare. It will also allow the present 7,600sq m (81,804sq ft) building to be demolished and replaced by a six-, eight- and nine-storey complex with more than double the capacity at 16,900sq m (181,909sq ft). The plan also provides for 53 basement car-parking spaces.

Irish Life will decide in due course whether to upgrade and extend the present building at an estimated cost of about €20 million or whether to go all out, demolish the present block and replace it with the much-enlarged building.

The location of Hume House opposite the US embassy could also prove of considerable benefit to Irish Life. Mr O'Reilly said that with a lot of US companies setting up businesses in Ireland it may well occur to their chief executives that they could have the option of opening their new offices beside the embassy.

Fergus O’Farrell of Savills, who advised Irish Life, described the acquisition as an “exciting opportunity” for Irish Life to benefit from the shortage of office accommodation in the city centre. He said the desirability of Ballsbridge as an office location was already evidenced by the number of investors who had acquired property in the area over the past five years.

The two development project under way beside Hume House should help Ballsbridge to become the number-one choice for working and living in the city. Hume House adjoins the infamous 2.2-acre former veterinary college site where the Comer Group is developing 46,400sq m (500,000 sq ft) of offices, apartments and retail facilities as well as a leisure centre.

On the other side of Hume House, a consortium headed by Chartered Land is developing 490 apartments,a 152-bedroom hotel, 7,154sq m (77,000sq ft) of retail and associated commercial space.