Dublin's The Burlington Hotel goes for sale at a quarter of its value

Luxury Dublin hotel, The Burlington Hotelhas gone up for sale at an asking price of just €75 million, around a quarter of what Irish developer Bernard McNamara paid for the property five years ago.

In a statement, the CBRE Group Inc said, the 501-room hotel was being sold on behalf of Grant Thornton Ltd, the receiver for Burhotel Trading Co, the broker managing the sale. McNamara's real estate development business declined after he paid € 288 million for the 3.8-acre site, about a kilometre from the centre of Dublin. Burhotel was one of the companies he once owned.

''There is an opportunity to bring in the support of a world-recognised international brand,'' Paul Collins, a director at CBRE Commercial Real Estate Services, Worldwide, said in the statement. ''That can bring trading at the Burlington to another level altogether and add significantly to the future investment value.''

The hotel is known locally as the Burlo, and is the city's second-largest after the Citywest Hotel. The Tourism Ireland agency said in July that Dublin was one of the few areas in the country where hotel occupancy rates were on the rise. CBRE cited data from hospitality sector benchmarking agency STR Global to show revenue per available room in the city's hotels rose for 23 consecutive months through July.

In 2009, McNamara won planning approval for demolishing the hotel and development of over 33,300 square metres  of office space, 180 homes, restaurants, shops and a gym through a company called Glasbay Ltd.

However, by then Ireland's property market had collapsed, with real estate values down to 66 per cent from September 2007 through June, according to Investment Property Databank Ltd.