Castlemarket makes £5.8m on block

Castlemarket Holdings has sold an office investment, Temple House, at Blackrock, Co Dublin, to Investment Bank of Ireland for just over £10 million - £5.8 million more than it paid for it three years ago. The sale comes shortly after IBI sold Bewley's Restaurant, in Grafton Street to Treasury Holdings for £10 million - double what it paid for it in 1997. The deals allowed both parties to rebalance their portfolios. Castlemarket is a joint venture company formed by Treasury and Jermyn Investments.

Temple House is a second generation office block with 30,000 sq ft currently producing a rent roll of £450,000 per annum. Most of the tenants occupy full floors with around 6,000 sq ft. They include Eagle Star, which is paying £16.50 per sq ft; AIB and Mogul Oil are paying £16; American Express, £12.50 and Agra Trading, £13.50.

IBI's decision to offload Bewley's of Grafton Street suggests that the bank does not expect investments in Dublin's principal street to soar at the same rate as in the past few years. There have been few investment sales on the street in the past two years. IBI's decision to sell is unlikely to encourage other institutions to dispose of investments because of the difficulty of replacing them.