‘Even gravel yards are occupied’

- Thomas Prior -

“There isn’t a huge amount of availability when it comes to commercial on any street in Cavan,” says local auctioneer Raymond Smith, reacting to recently published reports that suggest commercial property vacancy rates in Cavan stood at 12.7% at the end of 2024.

The rate is unchanged, static compared to December 2023, and remains several percentage points lower than the national average, which is running at around 14.5%.

The details were contained in the latest GeoDirectory Commercial Buildings round-up.

A deeper dig of the urban areas surveyed reveals that Cootehill had the highest commercial vacancy rate (21.7%) in the Breffni county, while Bailieborough had the lowest (14.4%).

Nationally Sligo had the highest commercial vacancy rate with more than one in five such properties recorded as vacant. It was followed by Donegal (20.1%) and Galway (18.8%). The lowest, meanwhile, were recorded in Meath (9.9%) once again, Wexford (10.8%) and Kerry (12.3%).

In total, 30,365 of the commercial units were vacant across the state in December 2024. The report also found that the commercial vacancy rate increased in 15 out of 26 counties over the period.

At 14.5% the rate now sits one percentage point higher than before the Covid pandemic struck, representing an increase of over 2,100 commercial units.

Mr Smith, Managing Director at Smith Property, attributes Cavan’s relative success to many factors.

“If you drive through Cavan town and towns in that part of the county, there’s practically zero vacancy rates in all of those retail spaces, nearly all are occupied.

“If you go out on the peripheries of those towns, to maybe the industrial units, sort of larger units, they’re all occupied too - be it trading businesses or used for storage. Even gravel yards are occupied with lots of different types of garages, or tractors, or cars,” he observed.

There is “huge variation” in demand, however, depending on the type and scale of what’s on offer suggests Mr Smith, who has investors calling “looking for 10,000 square foot even up to 100,000 square foot” of space out of which to conduct business.

Perhaps what’s most heartening to hear is the high occupancy is being driven by local companies creating employment in their communities.

“It’s all driven by local industry. Cootehill is a good engineering town. There’s quite a number of engineering companies on the Cootehill Road. It’s a big employment area. And then, it stems out from Cavan Town also. There’s a good few businesses in Cavan Town, primarily on the Dublin Road. Bailieborough [has] Lakeland Dairies. There’s spin off businesses from that.

“For storage, for boxes you go to Ballyjamesduff [and] Liffey Meats. Again spin off businesses. Cavan Box in Ballyjamesduff, a very busy business. They’re doing extremely well. There’s an appetite for businesses to locate to Cavan - demographics, availability of employees, wage levels, salaries, cost of living, links back to Dublin and the north. It is an attractive place to do business. I’m not surprised the vacancy level is down to what is reported.”

Declan Woods of Sherry Fitzgerald views the property sector as a pie divided into three distinct slices - residential, agricultural and then commercial. Whilst he sees the reported commercial vacancy figures as “encouraging”, the latter is still “weakest” of the three sectors.

While he recognises that the commercial sector has been “lagging” for the best part of a decade, he sees signs of things beginning to take “a turn for the better” with Cavan increasingly viewed as an affordable and attractive base for business.

“There would be a degree of affordability within the Cavan region still that wouldn’t be as evident when you move to certain other towns,” explained Mr Woods. There are “real bread and butter reasons” why businesses might choose to move here - schools and colleges, linkages both north and south, healthcare and more.

The Irish investment market enjoyed a strong end to 2024, the highest post-Covid.

In value terms, the last quarter of 2024 was the best since Q3 in 2022; and nationally activity levels in the development land market reached approximately €462M in the second half of 2024.

“There is a fair rent being achieved and being attained,” says Mr Woods of commercial property in Cavan. “The other side of it is, we don’t have huge numbers of retail parks and shopping centres.”

But he would like to see more investment in town centres.

“We don’t have full occupancy. There are sadly numerous buildings around the town you see with vacant dereliction notices. There’s a multitude of reasons for that.

There may well be people who financially aren’t in a position to spend money on a building that’s run down, and not in a state to be rented presently.

There are people probably in the midst of a project plan, to maybe redevelop and do things with a particular building. In the main, when you walk through other commercial centres, that’s where you see the pain being felt.”

Mr Woods is hopeful that ways can be explored to utilise empty space to encourage new commercial investment going forward.