Ireland enjoyed a record-breaking year of investment in 2014 with £3.4bn worth of transactions recorded – more than double the 2013 figure and well above the previous record of £2.5bn set in 2006.
Domestic buyers outweighed those from overseas, with 54% of investments coming from within the country. Of the foreign buyers, 79% were from the US, 11% from the UK and 10% from elsewhere.
Dublin also had a bumper year for office take-up, with 2.5m sq ft occupied in 2014 – a 28% increase compared to 2013 and the highest level seen since 2007.
There was a larger number of deals in 2014, with 228 agreed over the course of the year in contrast to 190 in 2013. Deal sizes remained stable with the 2014 average reaching 10,873 sq ft, just 517 sq ft higher than in 2013.
The surge in take-up has been driven by tech, media and telecommunications businesses, which accounted for nearly half of the deals in 2014.
Most of the tenant demand was concentrated in the city centre, where Dublin 1, 2 and 4 accounted for 58% of take-up.
A lack of new office supply has driven up city centre rents from £26 psf to £35.50 psf. This rental growth is expected to slow somewhat, with Knight Frank predicting rents at the end of 2015 will stand around the £41 mark, which would represent year-on-year growth of 16%, down from 36% over the course of 2014.
The delivery of 61,000 sq ft of office space at Canada Life House on St Stephen’s Green this year will be the first new office space to open since 2011. However, further speculative developments are not expected to complete until the second half of 2016.
