A site with planning permission for 419 apartments, 1 house and 7 commercial/community units in Dublin 7 has been brought to the market by Savills with a guide price of excess €32m.

The site is well located in Cabra, a popular and maturing residential area approximately 3 km north-west of Dublin City Centre, 1 km north-east of Phoenix Park and 800 m from Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) Grangegorman Campus.

It benefits from being 600m from the LUAS Green Line Cabra station. This provides rapid access to the City Centre, the Docklands, Sandyford, Cherrywood, Dundrum and Tallaght etc. Furthermore, access to the city centre can be provided by many Dublin Bus routes within close proximity.

Planning permission was granted by An Bord Pleanála as a Strategic Housing Development application in March 2018 for 419 apartments accommodated in 7 blocks up to 8 storeys in height. The development provides for 93 number one-bed, 260 number two-bed, and 66 number three-bed apartments. There is also one three bed house at the entrance of the development.

The scheme provides a neighbourhood centre comprising of 4 number retail/café/restaurant units including a convenience supermarket with ancillary off licence, an office, a community centre, a crèche, 402 number car parking spaces and 484 number bicycle parking spaces.

A number of feasibility studies have been undertaken by Henry J Lyons Architects taking into account the New Apartment Guidelines announced earlier this year and the emerging national planning strategies regarding building heights. These studies indicate that it is feasible to increase density to close to 600 apartments.

John Swarbrigg of Savills comments: “This is an exceptionally well-located site, close to the LUAS and Dublin City Centre and given the significant scale on offer, it is ideally suited for both the private and rental market upon completion. There has been strong demand for opportunities of this nature in recent months and we envisage this trend to continue due to the strong rental market.”

Latest data show that the vacancy rate in Dublin’s private rented sector (PRS) has been below 2% for more than four years now. This is significantly below the natural vacancy rate (NVR) which Savills estimates to be in the region of 5.3%.  Theory suggests that if the actual vacancy rate lies beneath the NVR the market is undersupplied and rents will be rising, and that’s exactly what is happening.