US firm pays €27m for D6 development

THE AMERICAN property investment and services firm Kennedy Wilson is continuing to snap up distressed Dublin properties with the purchase this week of a six-year-old apartment development in Ranelagh, Dublin 6, for about €27 million. The investment will show a net yield of just under 6 per cent.

It is the second substantial aparment block to have been acquired by the firm. Last May it paid €40 million for 210 apartments in The Alliance Building at the Gasworks in Ringsend, Dublin 4. The investment is likely to be producing a return of around 6.2 per cent.

Last July, Kennedy Wilson paid €15 million for Brooklawn House, a 4,000 sq m Ballsbridge office block that previously sold at the peak of the market in 2006 for 47 million.

Fergus O’Farrell of Savills handled the sale of the Sandford Close apartment block for Kieran Wallace of KPMG who was appointed receiver to Capel Developments by Bank of Scotland (Ireland).

The development includes 119 apartments in three separate blocks as well as four semi-detached coach-houses, a basement car park with 130 spaces, a mews building and a two-storey period office building rented at €125,000 per annum.

All the apartments are currently let and along with the offices is producing a rent roll of 2.08 million. One-bed apartments are renting at an average of 1,195 per month while two-beds are making 1,480.