Dublin docklands office block let to WeWork being readied for sale at knockdown price

The sale of No 2 Dublin Landings looks set to get under way within weeks following the appointment of Savills to handle the disposal on behalf of receivers Deloitte.

While Savills declined to comment on the matter when contacted by The Irish Times, the north docklands building is expected by property industry sources to be offered to the market for about €60 million.

Should a sale proceed at that level it would barely cover the €60 million loan the German bank Helaba extended to the South Korean real estate investment trust JR AMC when it partnered with Hana Financial Investment to acquire the property for €106.5 million through German investor KanAm Grund. Helaba engaged Deloitte as receiver to recover the monies owed to it in February of this year.

And while the potential €60 million guide price represents a 44 per cent discount on the price its South Korean owners paid to secure ownership of No 2 Dublin Landings in November 2018, that price drop pales alongside the €140 million valuation which was mooted when Hana and JR AMC weighed the sale of the property in 2022.

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A more recent attempt by the owners to refinance the building faltered after its tenant, WeWork, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US last November.

One of five office blocks built by Seán Mulryan’s Ballymore in partnership with Singaporean-headquartered Oxley at their wider 1 million sq ft mixed-use Dublin Landings development, No 2 Dublin Landings comprises 100,546sq ft of office accommodation distributed over six floors.

The property remains fully let to WeWork, which has since exited from bankruptcy following the rationalisation of its global portfolio at the end of May. Under the terms of the process confirmed by the US bankruptcy court WeWork eliminated $4 billion of its pre-petition debt and will save $12 billion in projected lease liabilities.

It has now amended the terms of more than 170 of its office leases and exited from 160 of its locations. It is unclear if the amendment of those leases has had an impact on the €5.38 million annual rent that WeWork is contracted to pay for No 2 Dublin Landings.

The arrival of the building to the market comes just two weeks after initial bids were received by CBRE on behalf of receivers Interpath Advisory for the nearby North Dock office scheme. Having sought €130 million for the 202,000sq ft development the selling agent is understood to have gotten first-round offers of between €60 million and €95 million.

Up to 10 parties are understood to have submitted bids for the scheme, which was developed by Targeted Investment Opportunities (TIO), an umbrella fund involving Nama, Oaktree Capital and Bennett Construction.

The bidders are said by market sources to have included Eamon Waters’s investment and property development company, Sretaw PE, Hines, developer Pat Crean’s Marlet Property Group, BCP, Orion Capital Managers, Lugus Capital and Patron Capital.

The TIO consortium had put the offices on the market last August for €155 million but failed to receive a bid. Eamon Richardson and Kieran Wallace of Interpath Advisory were appointed by Pimco in February of this year to pursue the sale process that is under way.