Davys 10m takeover of cavan town

Investment giants buy three apartments blocks and Cavan Crystal

 

Paul Neilan

 

An investment giant has become the major player in Cavan Town’s rental market with the €10M purchase of three apartment blocks and has also snapped up the Cavan Crystal Hotel, The Anglo-Celt can reveal.
Investment giants Davy has bought Farnham Court, Hampton Court and Clare’s Court and will have the details wrapped up on the purchase of the hotel inside a month.
The hotel, it is further understood, has been agreed at a fee slightly north of the guide price of €2.5m with the three apartment block prices all coming close to guide.
The wealth and asset management company scooped up 161 apartments and is thought to be lining up other landmark investments.
In all, the costs of the three blocks and the hotel - all within the last 10 months - comes in around the €10m mark.
Sources close to the deals say that the three apartment blocks will be rented out and held as a long-term investment; while the hotel is thought to be a prized, landmark addition to the company’s portfolio in the county with impressive cash flow.
Mystery had surrounded the recent buyers of Hampton Court on the Cootehill Road; Farnham Court on Farnham Road; Clare’s Court on the main street and the offices at Church View on Church Street. Church View, however, is not thought to be part of their portfolio.
The arm of Davy’s listed with the Land Registry is 'Davy Target Investments Plc’, an investment fund company controlled by the group and has purchased the apartments and offices as long-term investment properties, as opposed to a short-term flip.
The apartments are now being refurbished and as soon as they are ready for rental are being snapped up as rents continue to rise, giving the finance group the most muscle in the local rental market.

Stake
The scale of the company’s presence in the Cavan Town area can be illustrated by Cavan County Council figures, which show that in the older urban area of the town there are a total of 364 apartments with the planning authority - figures for the county are being compiled - giving Davy a more than significant stake in and around the town.
With two transactions, however, the county suffered the biggest year-on-year loss on property sale prices in the country - a full 27% more of a drop than the nearest county - in the first half of this year.
The 2014 January-June average value of property sales in the county is €42K (down 44% from 2013), but without the sales of Clare’s Court and Farnham Court, it is €65K (down 13% for the same period) - the apartments went for an average of around €20K each.

Knockdown prices
At Clare’s Court, according to the property price register, 44 apartments were sold. Forty-two two-beds went for €11,630 each with two additional three-bed apartments going for €14,631 - totalling €517,722. Included in the development, according to agent Savills, are four additional retail units - making 48 units in all. The agent quoted a €1.7m price for the whole lot. Their sale date is listed on the site as March 7 of this year.
Figures for the Farnham Court development, Farnham Road, on a deal completed on 58 apartments in one lot on January 31 of this year reveal a buying price of €1,189,426.88 - an asking price of €1.35m, including parking and commonage, had been quoted on daft.ie.
The sales of Farnham and Clare’s meant that the county was streets ahead of second-worst placed Limerick, whose annual change was -17%.
In December of last year, 59 apartments, alongside commercial and retail units, were sold at Hampton Court on the Cootehill Road. The development, which had a €3.95m price tag, had a separate commercial block, originally constructed as an apartment block, converted for educational use and occupied by Cavan Institute on a 35-year lease from January 2009 with no break options. The institute pays an annual rent of a quoted €205k.
The vast majority of the apartments, 54 of them, went for €22,050 each. The total for the sale of the apartments, recorded as completed on December 19, 2013, comes to €1,388,700.
Davy declined to comment when contacted by The Anglo-Celt.