The average value of secondhand homes in Ireland increased by 1.2% in the third quarter, with values up 3.2% in the first nine months of the year, according to agent Sherry FitzGerald.
Growth reached 5.5% in the same period last year, it said in its latest market report.
In Dublin, there was a further rise of 0.5% in the third quarter, bringing cumulative price growth in the year to 30 September to 1.8%. This is well down on the growth of 5.2% recorded during the same time period in 2022.
However, the number of secondhand properties listed for sale across the country in July 2023…

The Business Journal’s CRE Diversity Champion says If you want to deliver projects that will be well-received by all your tenants, start a team that is more representative of the range of your tenants.

Call it a real estate boomerang: investors who sold office buildings in San Francisco returning to buy them back for cut-rate deals.

Gaw Capital Partners, based in Hong Kong, and Irvine-based LBA Realty are in separate negotiations to repurchase properties they once owned in the city at steeply discounted prices, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing unidentified sources. 

The seller is Blackstone Group, based in New York

In 2018, the private equity firm run by Goodwin Gaw sold a 293,900-square-foot office campus at 560-655 Davis Street in Jackson Square to Blackstone for $245 million, or $833 per square foot.

Now, Gaw Capital Partners wants to buy it back — for a third of its pre-pandemic value.

Gaw Capital was chosen to buy the three-building North Park complex from Blackstone for around $90 million, or $306 per square foot, sources told the Chronicle. The four-story brick campus is 40 percent vacant.

The office vacancy rate in San Francisco hit a record 33.9 percent in the third quarter during a continued shift to remote work, with office values plummeting across the market.

LBA Realty once owned an 82,000-square-foot office building at 600 Townsend Street in Showplace Square, which Blackstone picked up as part of a portfolio for an unknown sum.

The 115-year-old building was once fully leased by Salesforce and then occupied by Airbnb, whose sublease expired in March.

LBA Realty is now buying back the vacant brick building for just over $24 million, or $292 per square foot.

Blackstone’s decision to offload North Park and 600 Townsend is a “pragmatic” move, sources told the Chronicle.

The company is shedding distressed assets to pour its money into higher value properties and growth sectors, or pick up troubled properties at a lower basis, they said.

A Blackstone spokesperson said the company has turned away from traditional offices to invest in “sectors with strong fundamentals propelled by macro demand trends” — such as logistics, student housing and data centers. 

Gaw Capital, run by one of the richest families in Hong Kong, owns a 17-story office building at 555 Montgomery Street in the Financial District. An affiliate, Downtown Properties, owns two other office properties at 300 and 550 Montgomery Street.

— Dana Bartholomew

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The post Gaw Capital and LBA Realty look to buy back offices in SF appeared first on The Real Deal.

Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, is the government’s biggest-name witness in its landmark antitrust case against Google.

After spending $100 million to upgrade the office tower at 80 Pine Street but still struggling to find tenants, Rudin Management is looking for a buyer.

Rudin retained Eastdil Secured to market the 1.2-million-square-foot office property in Manhattan’s Financial District, Bisnow reported. News of its availability first came from Green Street’s Real Estate Alert, which suggested bids could come in at around $167 per square foot, or $200 million.

Leasing momentum appeared to be building at 80 Pine when nonprofit Vibrant Emotional Health took 60,000 square feet in February, with the annual asking rent in the mid-$50s per square foot.

But overall the building has not recovered since AIG’s late 2021 departure, which left an 800,000-square-foot void. Some 700,000 square feet is available for lease at the 40-story property, which takes up a full city block.

Tenants besides Vibrant include the National Urban League and the New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association. Existing leases have roughly a dozen years and $200 million in rent payments remaining.

An incoming owner can try to parlay the building’s upgrades into new deals and higher rents. Bank of America provided a $100 million financing package to Rudin in 2021 to fund the renovations, which included touch free-access points and an amenity center in the middle of the building with a conference facility, dining hall and terrace.

In a statement to Bisnow, a Rudin spokesperson said the company was “constantly exploring and evaluating options for our entire portfolio,” while adding it was “pleased by the market’s tremendous interest in 80 Pine.”

But it’s no secret that office leasing in Manhattan has been difficult since about 50 years of a gradual shift to remote work was condensed into just two by the pandemic.

Rudin offloaded another office property over the summer, selling 55 Broad Street to Silverstein Properties and Metro Loft Management for $172.5 million. The developers plan to convert the 410,000-square-foot property into 571 market-rate apartments, one of the largest office-to-residential plans in city history.

Rudin is retaining a stake in the project.

— Holden Walter-Warner

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The post Rudin puts mostly empty FiDi office building on market appeared first on The Real Deal.

GI Partners is lending nearly a half-billion dollars in development funding to Denver-based data center provider Vantage Data Centers. 
The infrastructure investment giant announced last week it is extending a $450M term loan facility to Vantage, one of the world’s largest providers of data center campuses focused on the hyperscale market.
According to GI Partners, the money will be used to facilitate the continued build-out of Vantage’s data center portfolio as the company continues its expansion across key North American markets. 
Indeed, Vantage is already rapidly growing its footprint in the U.S. Backed by data center investing powerhouse DigitalBridge, the firm operates close to 2 gigawatts of capacity globally and…

In an industry where customers are slow to trust and quick to criticize, a new fee from Unity infuriated studios that use its platform.

Sixty-six Hard Rock employees will be laid off as a result of the closure.

About a quarter of Black babies and toddlers in rental households face the threat of eviction in a typical year, a new study says, and all children are disproportionately at risk.

Josh Kruger, 39, was shot seven times. The police said that no arrests had been made.