D2 Private puts prime Victoria property on the market

One of the largest and best-located office buildings in London’s Victoria precinct, bought in 2008 by the D2 Private investment company, is now for sale for £180 million (about €225 million). If that price is achieved, the investment will show a marginal profit.

D2 Private, founded by David Arnold and Deirdre Foley, is understood to hold a stake of about 10 per cent in the high-profile office investment.

Many of D2’s Irish investment properties are in Nama and some have already been sold at substantial losses, including 1 Warrington Place on Lower Mount Street, Dublin 2 – sold for €27 million – and Brooklawn House, off Shelbourne Road, in Ballsbridge, which sold for €15 million, well short of the €47 million paid for it in 2006.

As well as the London office investment at 1 Victoria Street, D2 has also been seeking a buyer for the Woolgate Exchange, a high-rise office complex in the City of London with a price tag of more than £265 million. A sale was apparently agreed with a Malaysian sovereign fund but the deal collapsed. Since then, the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation – formerly Anglo Irish Bank – was reported to have sold £40 million in debt on the trophy asset.

The Victoria Street block is strategically located between the centre of Victoria and Westminster and is occupied by the civil service, under a lease with more than eight years to run. The current rental roll is £9.17m. The building extends to 31,163sq m (335,424sq ft) and includes a basement, lower-ground and upper-ground floors, and eight overhead floors. There are 105 covered car-parking spaces. The rent for the office space equates to £409 per sq m (£38 per sq ft), while the overall rent works out at £294 per sq m (£27.33 per sq ft) – modest by comparison with some of the rents in Dublin’s best locations.

Selling agents CBRE have made much play of the fact that the block stands on an island site of .79 of a hectare (1.96 acres), which may allow scope to enlarge the building or provide shops along the 195m frontage on to Victoria Street.