By Michelle Crawley
LAKEPOINT Retail Park in Mullingar, one of the first retail parks built outside of Dublin when it opened in 2001, has been sold by NAMA as part of a €155 million package to a US investment firm. New York-based asset management company, Marathon purchased the retail park in Mullingar last week as part of a major deal including four other Irish retail parks: Poppyfield Retail Park in Clonmel, Four Lakes Retail Park in Carlow, the M1 Retail Park in Drogheda, and the first phase of Carrickmines Retail Park in South County Dublin. NAMA set a guideline asking price of €110 million for their first ever offering of a retail parks portfolio in July of this year and received a lot of overseas interest in the retail parks, with details of the €155 million sale emerging during the week. The aggressive pricing by mainly overseas funds underlines the recovery in values of commercial units and developments as well as heightened competition expected for the remaining distressed assets yet to be sold. This isn’t the first time that the US-based investment management company has taken interest in Ireland, having paid €120 million over the summer for loans associated with the Heuston South Quarter beside Heuston Station which were offloaed by Lloyds Banking Group. Lakepoint Retail Park, which was valued earlier this year at €8 million, has a rent roll of €772,000 and is 75% let with an average lease term of 11.5 years, according to NAMA. The retail park, whose anchor tenants are Woodie’s DIY, consists of a number of units in the 85,000 square foot retail development. No doubt Marathon will place great emphasis on letting the remaining quarter of the retail park, which is currently idle. The biggest retail park within the portfolio is the Carrickmines investment which is thought to have accounted for €60 million of the initial valuation produced by the selling agents, DTZ Sherry FitzGerald and CBRE. The first phase of the Carrickmines Retail Park was bought in 2007 by the late businessman Liam Maye for €100 million. Combined, the parks portfolio is currently producing an overall rental income of €9.5 million which will give the new owners an immediate return of 5.8 per cent. No doubt, the yield can be substantially improved by Marathon through cost-effective and better asset management.
