Google Buys Tallest Building in Dublin

Google purchased the Montevetro Building this week, the tallest building in the city of Dublin, for €99.9 million (roughly $136 million U.S. dollars) from Real Estate Opportunities (REO) and The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) according to a Wall Street Journal article. Google bought the 15 story, 210,000 square foot Montevetro development on Barrow Street to house about 2,000 staff members and accommodate new business activities that are currently in development. Real Estate Opportunities redeveloped the building, and its chairman, Ray Horney, said the sale is one of the largest commercial real estate deals Ireland has ever seen reported the San Francisco Chronicle. Nama, which acquired the Montevetro building as security for a loan that transferred from a participating institution in April 2010, advance the necessary working capital to complete the development.

"We are at capacity in our EMEA headquarters in Barrow Street and the additional space will allow us to relocate some teams to Montevetro and to create an even more spacious working environment for Googlers in our existing building," said John Herlihy, head of Google in Ireland.

Nama chairman Frank Daly comment that "the successful completion of the Montevetro development and its sale again reflects the positive potential of Nama to support the commercial property market in Ireland without compromising its objective of recovering monies owed to the taxpayer."

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.

EU Property Investment Expected to Rise in 2011

The new Global Market Perspective report out from Jones Lang LaSalle observes that a broad range of investors are targeting prime European real estate, and that volumes on investments are expected to rise in Europe to be around €130 billion in 2011, a 30% increase from 2010. An excerpt from the report:

The large, liquid and transparent markets in the UK, France and Germany will attract the majority of funds, with their focus being on London and Paris. Nonetheless, investors will widen their geographic search, and we will see increased trading in the Nordic markets, Central and Eastern Europe and Moscow.

Transaction volumes could be held back by a lack of lending and continued low levels of trading in secondary assets which, in most markets, are still considered too risky at current pricing levels. That said, we may see pricing expectations on secondary assets shifting to become more realistic, in large part driven by disposals from the banks (or from former bank stock held by NAMA). This will boost trading volumes.

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.