Lone Star Nears €200M Quintain Ireland Sale As PGIM Provides Debt For Cherrywood
Texas-based private equity giant Lone Star is close to agreeing to sell the majority of its Irish residential development business to TPG in a €200M-plus deal, according to Green Street News.
The transaction would include the Quintain Ireland platform and its land holdings in Adamstown, Clonburris and Portmarnock in Dublin, which are understood to have a combined capacity to create around 4,500 homes.
However, it will exclude Quintain Ireland’s interests in Cherrywood, which is set to deliver 3,000 new homes, and Quintain Ireland will continue to manage the development of the Cherrywood land for Lone Star.
Lone Star started investing heavily in Ireland in 2012, including accumulating large plots of land in Dublin. In 2018, it planned to combine several of its Dublin development projects into a public company. However, after postponing an initial public offering in November of that year, in 2019 it abandoned the IPO altogether and instead created an Irish arm of its UK development business, Quintain.
Quintain Ireland is now the third-largest developer of homes in Ireland after Cairn Homes and Glenveagh Properties. Lone Star recently hired Rothschild and Savills to undertake a strategic review that led to the proposed sale. TPG is understood to be looking to acquire further sites once its acquisition of Quintain Ireland is complete.
Separately, in a boost to Ireland’s residential investment sector, PGIM Real Estate has provided €91.5M in financing to Hines and APG for a new 431-unit build-to-rent scheme at Cherrywood that is 99% occupied and features two blocks with ground-floor retail units.
Completed in 2022, the Cherrywood scheme is part of the wider Cherrywood Strategic Development Zone to build a new town centre in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, south Dublin.
“Our conviction in the living sector and build to rent remains strong as it continues to demonstrate strong operational fundamentals and attractive investment opportunities, especially in prime cities such as Dublin, where rental pressure zones are expected to continue to constrain new supply and support occupancy,” PGIM Real Estate Senior Portfolio Manager for European Core Debt James Mathias said in a statement.
“We’re seeing great progress across the Cherrywood Town Centre project with phase two completing late last year and phase three set to complete this summer. This will mean that a total of 1,269 apartments including 127 social housing homes will have come on stream over the past two years,” Hines Managing Director Gary Corrigan said.
