CHARLIE Kenny's Clancourt Group has bought Europa House a modem office building, at Harcourt Street, Dublin 2, for £8.5 million. The 43,500-square-foot block is currently producing a rental income of £670,000, which will show a yield of 7.7 per cent. The sale completes the disposal of three office investments owned by the Swedish property company, Aranas. It still owns a one-acre site at the corner of Harcourt Road and Charlemont Street, close to where LUAS, the light rail service, will operate.

Aranas first entered the Dublin market in 1988 and had great difficulty in finding tenants for Europa House and another third generation building at 65/66 Lower Mount Street because of a downturn in the office market. Aranas is understood to have taken a drubbing in the Dublin office market. Earlier this year, it sold the 11,000-square-foot building on Lower Mount Street and Iveagh Court, a 27,000-square-foot block at Harcourt Road, to Dublin housebuilder Sean Reilly for £6.6 million.

Aranas originally bought the site for Europa House from the Clancourt Group, which has other offices in the same area. The tenants in Europa House include the Brazilian Embassy, Corel Corporation and the Bank of Bermuda.

Only one other Dublin office investment with a higher value has been sold in the past year. Last June, a group of businessmen paid over £9 million for Lansdowne House, a 65,000-square-foot building at Lansdowne Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. The yield in this case was 8 per cent.

Liam Lenehan of Hamilton Osborne King handled the sale of the Aranas portfolio and Tony O'Loughlin of Jones Lang Wootton acted for the Clancourt Group.