Meta’s Dublin docklands office primed for €80m sale

South Korean-headquartered Kookmin Bank has instructed agent CBRE to ready Meta’s offices on Dublin’s East Wall Road for sale. The bank is understood to be looking to bring the Beckett Building as it is known to the market at a guide price of €80 million, or some €21 million less than the €101 million it paid for the Dublin docklands property in 2018. While the reduction in pricing is significant, Kookmin Bank has, as owner, earned in the region of €22.5 million in rental income over the past five years.

Meta occupies the building on 15-year lease at an annual rent of €4.53 million per annum. The rent works out at €250 per sq m (€23.50 per sq ft), which is substantially less than the prevailing rate in the city’s docklands and central business district. The lease is due to expire in 2032 with a break option in 2027. Should a sale proceed at the proposed guide price the prospective purchaser would stand to secure a net initial yield of about 7 per cent.

Developed originally in 2007 by Zoe Developments, the company headed up by the late Liam Carroll, the Beckett Building lay dormant until 2011 when it was sold on the instructions of receivers acting for the Bank of Scotland (Ireland) to Luke and Brian Comer’s Comer Group for just €5 million. The Comers are understood to have spent a further €30 million on the building’s fit-out before letting it to Facebook.

The proposed sale of the Beckett Building comes as Meta prepares to vacate its current 250,000sq ft European headquarters at 4-5 Grand Canal Square four years before its agreed 2027 break date with a view to moving its employees to its new international headquarters in Ballsbridge.

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The Dublin 4 campus will be Meta’s second largest campus globally, outsized only by its global headquarters at Menlo Park in California. The development comprises the four blocks previously occupied by AIB’s former Bankcentre headquarters and Fibonacci Square, the 34,838sq m (375,000sq ft) office space developed by Johnny Ronan’s RGRE at the front of the Merrion Road site.

Fibonacci Square remains the subject of a potential sale to Pontegadea, the family firm of Zara founder Amancio Ortega, notwithstanding Meta’s instruction to Cushman & Wakefield in December to sublet all four of the newly developed blocks to a new occupier or occupiers.