The Infinity Building Comes To Market As €47M Long Investment Play

Agent Savills Ireland has been appointed to sell The Infinity Building office development to the north of Dublin’s city centre with a guide price of €47M.

The six-storey, 127K SF office building at Smithfield, Dublin 7, has 63 car parking spaces and a total passing rent of €3.9M per annum with a weighted average unexpired lease term of circa eight years to break and around 13 years to expiry and is fully occupied, with about 90% let to the Office of Public Works.

Savills said that the office sale offers investors a “rare opportunity to acquire well-located and secure income-producing offices” and the building has an energy performance BER rating of B3.

In April 2017, the Office of Public Works negotiated a below-average rent level for Dublin city centre office space by agreeing to a longer lease period without a break option. The state agency agreed to a rent of €23 per SF for three floors of the Infinity Building, totalling 38K SF, lower than prevailing rates of between €40 per SF and €50 per SF.

For its part, the OPW signed a 25-year lease for the Smithfield block, with the first break option in year 14 of occupation and rent reviews every five years.

State health agency Hiqa, the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the Law Society of Ireland also occupy the building, previously known as George’s Court, which was developed in 2002 by the now defunct Zoe Developments. It was sold by the receiver, Deloitte, in 2015 to a Norwegian investor for €28.65M, which also acquired the Ulster Bank on O’Connell Street for €11.4M in 2014.

On acquisition, it had three vacant floors, but having refurbished the property, the Norwegian investor subsequently sold the building in an off-market transaction for €57M in January 2019 to a fund connected to Credit Suisse in a deal brokered by Colliers International. Meanwhile, the Ulster Bank building at 2-4 Lower O'Connell Street was sold to AEW for €12.5M.

“The strength of this asset is underpinned by its government-backed long income profile with tenants recently extending their lease commitments,” Savills Director of Investment Fergus O'Farrell said in marketing The Infinity Building.