Deutsche Bank’s asset manager DWS has taken Dublin apartment blocks it put up for sale earlier this year off the market.
In January, the asset management firm appointed Savills to prepare 368 apartments spread across Cheevers Court and Haliday House in Dún Laoghaire for sale.
DWS officially launched the sales process for the two south Dublin apartment schemes in March, with a guide price of €220 million attached to the two schemes.
The price listed represented a near 12 per cent premium on the amount the German fund paid for the apartments six years ago.
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The Irish Times understands DWS has now pulled the sales process. A spokesman for the company declined to comment.
Two property market professionals familiar with the sales process told The Irish Times the German fund received bids from Norges Bank Investment Management, which oversees Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.
The bids by both investment funds came in at above guide price and DWS decided to not proceed with the deal for strategic reasons.
The Irish Times understands DWS chose to cancel the sales process because it would be difficult to reinvest any proceeds from a transaction in another residential asset with a similar yield.
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Frankfurt-listed DWS, led by Stefan Hoops, has more than €1 trillion in assets under management worldwide.
The fund first entered the Irish market in 2018 when it completed a €147.7 million deal with Green Reit for Dublin’s Westend Retail Park. It spent close to €1 billion on Irish commercial and residential real estate in the following two years.
In 2020, DWS acquired Cheevers Court and Haliday House for €195 million from the Cosgrave Group in 2020.
In the same year, the firm also invested more than €350 million to buy two separate residential portfolios in a deal that more than doubled the value of the manager’s Irish residential portfolio.
Two years later, it agreed to purchase a further 105 apartments being built in Lusk, Co Dublin.
It also spent €108 million to buy 214 apartments in the Fairways scheme in Dún Laoghaire in south Dublin, which adjoins Cheevers Court and Haliday House. In 2023, it acquired 46 homes in a housing estate near Dublin Airport called Belcamp Manor as part of a €24.5 million deal.
In the past several years, the German fund has begun to dispose of some assets it acquired when it first expanded to Ireland.
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It sold its interest in Point Campus, the state’s largest student accommodation development, to US investor Greystar for about €150 million in 2024. The project was bought by DWS in 2020 for a reported €172 million.
Last month, DWS announced it has taken a stake in Flannery Plant Hire, an Irish-owned construction business based in London, in a deal worth a reported €584 million.
The company, set up by Irishman Patrick Flannery snr and his wife Mary, was established in 1972. It has a fleet of more than 7,900 pieces of equipment across 16 depots in the UK and Ireland.
