Iconic tower in docklands for €11m

Alto Vetro, the slim but soaring residential tower in Dublin’s Grand Canal Docks completed in 2009 at an overall cost of over €13 million, is expected to be the subject of intense bidding between Irish and overseas investors when it is offered for sale from today at a relatively small discount – €11 million.

Patricia Ward of DTZ Sherry FitzGerald is handling the sale of the 16-storey apartment building for William O'Riordan and Declan McDonald of PwC, who were appointed receivers to the insolvent development company Treasury Holdings by the former Anglo Irish Bank. The building was valued at €15 million at the peak of the property bubble.

With the iconic tower block currently producing a rent roll of €593,800, a sale at the quoted guide price would show a net return of 5.16 per cent after acquisition costs are taken into account.

That yield is considerably less than has been generally available from the sale of distressed property assets in Dublin over the past year but, according to some market sources, it reflects the broadly held view that the property market has well and truly bottomed out and is now attracting an ever increasing number of bidders.

The terms also reflect the fact that Alto Vetro is the very first of a new generation, a stunning and esoteric apartment block that has yet to cash in on a new round of higher rents in the city. The fact that there is a constant waiting list to rent apartments in the tower will also enhance its value to investors.

The block was built by Sisk at a contract price of €10.2 million and shortly after being handed over to Treasury in January, 2009, was used by BMW to launch a new 7 series car which was hoisted on to the 16th floor in a glass box.

On a broader front, sales of multi-family “distressed” property investments exceeded €100 million in 2012 when the census returns showed that the overall rental market more than doubled in size to 305,337 units over a five-year period.

Alto Vetro has 26 apartments in all, 24 of them two-bedroom units with a floor area of 74sq m (800sq ft) which rent at between €1,400 and €1,900 per month. The two remaining units are three-bedroom triplex penthouses which have been renting at €3,000 each per month. These homes extend to 183sq m (1,969sq ft) and have unbroken views of the cityscape.

The roof space is given over to a garden protected by a two-metre high glass balustrade. All the apartments are fitted out to five-star standard and are ideal for entertaining. Two ground floor retail units used as a barber's salon and a coffee shop are each rented at €35,000 per annum.

Key attraction
Patricia Ward says that one of the key attractions of the investment is the exceptional strength of the residential letting market in the Grand Canal Quay area and the south inner city generally.

Conceived by Shay Cleary Architects as a "pristine glazed rectangular free-standing object", it has the highest plot ratio of any building in the city at 17 to one – a record for Dublin because part of the tower was allowed to encroach on the campshire of the quayside.

The finished product is an elegant urban marker at the centre of the new south docks district. A series of external sliding stainless steel screens provide sun shading to the apartments and a second layer of screens internally allow for privacy at key locations in the homes.

Alto Vetro looks across the Grand Canal dock at Montevetro, a 15-storey block also built by Treasury and acquired by Nama as security for a loan transferred to it.

The State agency funded the completion of the block and sold it to Google for €99.9 million. CIÉ got €21 million from the sale. Before the property crash, the two blocks were expected to be followed by even bigger towers in the docklands area.

Ward says that with deposit rates now typically ranging from 1.9 to 2.6 per cent and inflation running at 1.7 per cent, investors were increasingly looking at property to diversify and protect their capital as well as giving them a decent income return with the potential for capital appreciation.