Niall Gaffney on the Irish property company’s plan to double the footprint of its flexible office platform.

IPUT Real Estate plans to double the footprint of its flexible offices business over the next year, after securing market-leading rents across its Dublin flex platform, Green Street News can reveal.

Making it Work has been rebranded as Studio, as IPUT moves to increase the locations it operates at from nine to 16 by year-end, with the aim of it comprising around 5% of its office portfolio.

The decision to scale the platform follows an uptick in leasing velocity, achieving rents of €200/ sq ft for the flex business and the continued trend of the office sector mirroring the hospitality industry.

Niall Gaffney, IPUTs chief executive officer, gave Green Street News an update on Studio while discussing increasing positivity around fundraising, the transition to €80/sq ft rents for super-prime office space, and Dublin’s global appeal.

Why are you scaling your flex office concept, Studio?

The office rental growth story has prompted us to pivot our business to respond to the need for flexible, amenitised space in the city.

We’re pitching constantly to investors, and we’ve included in our investor deck the recent PMA forecast for the office market in Europe. They’re forecasting the prime end of the Dublin office market – just to be clear, the very prime end – to be the best-performing in Europe between 2026 and 2029. And that’s what we’ve been saying for the last number of years.

The level of occupancy for Studio is high and the payback is quick.

Studio is effectively a new standard in workplace amenity. The whole blend of life, work, amenity is represented by the Studio brand. The rebrand is more definitive in terms of speaking to operational hospitality, which is the direction of travel for the office sector.

What we’ve seen with Studio (formerly called Making it Work) is an uptick in leasing velocities. Over the past 2.5 years, we’ve built out a platform that’s now nearly 52,000 sq ft. Our plan is to double that over the next year. It’s added nearly €1 per share to our annual dividend since we launched the business in 2022. We’re seeing 98% occupancy. Our leasing velocity, using this format of licence agreement, is much faster than the traditional leasing model.

We’re going from nine city centre locations to 16 locations by year end, with the aim of having it at about 5% of our office portfolio. There will be new locations at Hume Street, Styne House, Riverside Two, and Three Dublin Landings.

The current rent roll is around €6m, but we see it growing towards €11m by year end. It’s a similar flexible leasing approach to what GPE is doing in London. Iput is responding to the market demand for quality, amenitised space in the core CBD.

How does the shorter tenure from the Studio business impact portfolio valuation?

Valuers are still getting their head around it – there is that challenge. They tend to apply a higher yield, but the level of uplift it’s showing in terms of the income, that surplus of income over and above what we would call passing rent, is a significant premium. Iput is taking that premium as compensation for a slightly higher yield.

Since launching our flexible office brand, we’re seeing average terms in that period averaging 2.9 years – and that will continue to improve. The level of occupancy for Studio is high and the payback is quick. As we look out over the next few years, we see this becoming a more significant part of our leasing strategy. It allows us onboard and grow new businesses across the portfolio.

But the one thing that does strike me about the success of Studio, where we’re achieving rents of up to €200/sq ft, is that when you strip out the additional costs of fully-fitted licence deals  and you look at the economics of it, there is a propensity for businesses to bear net rents of over €90/sq ft. So this implies there is scope for rental growth at the top end of the Dublin office market.

Do you think prime rents need to increase significantly to facilitate the development of offices that occupiers want?

The office rental cycle in Dublin has generally seen pedestrian growth in office rents, consistently hovering around €60/sq ft to €65/sq ft for grade A space. So, what we’re seeing for the first time is we are quoting €70/sq ft for prime office stock. For instance, we’re quoting that for a floor in the Earlsfort centre off Stephen’s Green – and we know other office owners are quoting €70/sq ft-plus for new build stock.

We’re going to bring 29 Earlsfort Terrace to the market in the autumn as a potential HQ for pre-letting. We intend to go onsite there in early 2027. The conventional underwrite on that has been around €75/sq ft, but my team started looking at the cost of construction.

Office leasing market around St Stephen’s Green is hot. The cost of construction over the past 24 months has risen by between 35% and 40%. If you apply that to the economics of saying, “How do we build 29 Earlsfort as a new HQ of 190,000 sq ft economically?”, allowing 35% for heightened construction costs, what do we need to allow for in terms of rent?

Take the historical base rent of €60 and apply a 35%-40% increase to that, you’re at over €80/ sq ft. Just allowing for build cost inflation, rents at that level are going to be required to justify new supply of grade A plus space between now and 2030. It would suggest that office rents are going to shift towards, or past, €80/sq ft, for us to be able to physically build that and lease it to a potential occupier.

In 2026 there’s going to be acute shortage of grade A-plus space.

JLL estimates in Dublin that the vacancy rate that for grade A-plus is currently 4%. What’s coming out of the ground in 2025 is prelet, and 85% of what’s due in 2026 is prelet.

There isn’t speculative finance available, and you don’t have a lot of private equity funding – so what’s going to happen is that in 2026 there’s going to be acute shortage of grade A-plus space. We’re aware of major requirements, the law firms, some of the banks, professional services firms – and I’m not including fintech in this – just domestically, there’s a significant level of demand for new, amenitised workspace.

What’s your view on Dublin’s global position with the ongoing tariff issues?

Dublin is a hub, a global hub for fintech, has been for the past 50 years – and will be for the next 50 years, irrespective of what comes and goes with tariffs. They do cause uncertainty, they do cause volatility. But ultimately as a location to do business, Dublin has established itself as a global hub for business into the rest of the world for US firms.

North America, along with lots of other jurisdictions, sells into the rest of the world from Dublin, and that is going to continue. You can’t sell everything from one geography. You do need to have bases around the globe, and Dublin is one of the best bases to do so – and that has been built up over 50 years and it’s not going to be eroded overnight.

Workday has committed to Dublin in the past few weeks in a really meaningful way. It answers a lot of the big question mark over the future of Dublin and fintech. AON moving from two locations into our George’s Quay development is another obvious example of that commitment.

Following Trump’s first 100 days in office, are you getting any sense that corporates have become less focused on ESG?

We haven’t seen a pushback to date. What we’re seeing is that occupiers and businesses in Europe still value the sustainable nature of buildings – and what we’ve found is the more sustainable the building, the quicker it leases.

We launched the Nexus logistics sub-fund on the base of it being an Article 9 fund (the most sustainable type), and it attracted the Irish sovereign wealth fund and a major Dutch insurance company. That spoke to me about the long-term nature of real estate and that ultimately sustainable buildings are more valuable. The fact that you can say this building will last longer, will attract more occupiers, will be more energy efficient – in other words will be more economic to run. Iput believes sustainability drives financial returns.

How are you selling real estate to global investors at the start of this cycle?

We recently raised €115m for our Nexus logistics sub-fund. That’s given us optimism about raising money generally and for raising capital for real estate strategies in Dublin. I’m doing a lot more investor relations now than I was a year ago, and we’re getting more traction in terms of investor interest.

The attraction of real estate as an asset class is that it’s typically seen as a safe haven at times of volatility, particularly for the pension fund investor or the insurance company. Its income characteristics – its resilience of income – is what makes it attractive.

A lot of turbulence, a lot of volatility – and throughout that period, IPUT’s dividend yield of close to 6% has been maintained or has increased.

Capital values do oscillate as a result of volatility in capital markets, but income has been pretty solid and resilient. I think sometimes we take it for granted from real estate. The most attractive characteristic of real estate is its income generating capabilities.

In Europe, we’ve had a decade of crises between the various different geopolitical events. Then you had Covid-19 sandwiched in between. A lot of turbulence, a lot of volatility – and throughout that period, IPUT’s dividend yield of close to 6% has been maintained or has increased.

Despite all the challenges we’re facing, the lower interest rate environment and the easing of monetary policy means the resilient income characteristics of real estate generally are in focus. Dublin is an attractive city for investment – we are in a growth economy with a stable political environment. We are confident in the outlook and we are now seeing that in terms of investor confidence.

Source: Green Street News Q&A with Niall Gaffney, CEO of IPUT Real Estate 12.05.25