Kennedy Wilson Completes Ireland’s Largest Community

Clancy Quay. Image courtesy of Kennedy Wilson

The largest apartment community in Ireland is now complete, with Kennedy Wilson wrapping up the third phase of the 845-unit Clancy Quay project near central Dublin. The final phase adds 246 units to the property, which is designed to house more than 1,800 residents, as the city experiences a jump in available rental supply.

Located at Clancy Quay South Circular Road, about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) west of the city center, the property sits in the residential neighborhood of Islandbridge, on the south banks of the River Liffey. Kennedy Wilson purchased the 13.6-acre site of a former British military barracks in 2013 and kicked off a phased development that has since added 422 units to the project’s existing first phase, which had 423 units.

READ ALSO: GSA Acquires Dublin Portfolio for $440M

NYSE-listed real estate investment firm Kennedy Wilson owns 50 percent of the project, alongside joint venture partner AXA Investment Managers – Real Assets, which holds the remaining interest in the asset. The companies teamed up in 2018 to jointly own a portfolio of 1,173 units in Dublin, including Clancy Quay as well as Kennedy Wilson’s Alliance and Sandford Lodge apartment properties.

Apartments in Clancy Quay feature high-end interior designs, granite kitchen counters, balconies with glass railing and patios with iron gates. Community amenities include a gym, cinema room, business center, common playground, resident lounge and landscaped gardens and courtyards.

Renter’s market

Dublin’s apartment market has turned favorable to renters for the first time in years as the impact of coronavirus and a nationwide lockdown—which is now being lifted—helped drive a surge in available units. The Irish capital saw a 40 percent year-on-year increase in the number of homes available to rent in May, according to World Property Journal, citing data from property website Daft.ie.

Prior to the crisis, Ireland had experienced rapid rental growth amid a worsening housing shortage, with Dublin becoming the world’s eighth most expensive city in which to rent last year, according to research by Deutsch Bank. Multifamily investment in Ireland grew 141 percent year-on-year in 2019, JLL reported, while CBRE found that the asset class reeled in €2 billion euros, or 33 percent of commercial real estate investment spend, in 2019—up from essentially zero prior to 2012.

Full pipeline

Kennedy Wilson, which has a portfolio of multifamily and office properties in the western U.S., the U.K. and Ireland, expects to complete another 750 units before the end of the year, with 4,100 new units slated for delivery by 2024. The global real estate owner-operator has more than $500 million of development projects underway in Ireland, totaling more than 1,000 new units, including The Grange and Coopers Cross in Dublin.

This past February, the developer sold Pioneer Point, a 294-unit community in London, to RealStar for $130 million after boosting occupancy through a management and renovation plan.