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By Jemima Kelly
LONDON, July 11 (Reuters) - Real estate investors willtriple spending on Irish commercial property this year, in a betthe country's tentative economic recovery will gather pace,research showed on Thursday.
Total sales are likely to exceed 1.5 billion euros ($1.9billion) versus 576 million in 2012, property consultant Savills said.
It would be the highest amount since 1.8 billion euros in2007, before the global financial crash sent values plunging byup to half in a country that, together with Spain, sufferedEurope's worst property crash.
Some investors have said they see value in Irish realestate.
"After steep falls in property values, Ireland is now one ofthe highest-yielding markets in the developed world," said DavidSkinner, real estate chief investment officer at Aviva Investors, which owns 28 billion euros of property in Europe.
"Irish real estate looks attractive for long-term investorswith a moderate risk appetite."
Euro zone policymakers have hailed Ireland as a successstory versus other bailed-out countries such as Greece andPortugal, where political instability and biting austeritymeasures are hampering economic growth.
Ireland is due to exit its EU/IMF bailout programme laterthis year and is targeting growth of 1.3 percent in 2013, thoughthe country said last month it had slid back into recession.
Its patchy recovery has not dented overseas interest fromcompanies like Deutsche Bank's property arm, JPMorgan and AXA Real Estate, who are chasing arelatively small number of high-quality properties in thecapital Dublin.
Under pressure from investors to find high returns, some sayDublin looks a good bet versus safer but lower-yielding marketslike London, Paris and Frankfurt.
Yields, or the annual rent as a percentage of the property'svalue, for the best Dublin offices are about 6.25 percent versusabout 4 percent in London's West End, one of Europe's mostin-demand markets.
Tenant demand is also on the rise and Dublin office rentsrose in March for the first time since the financial crisis.Helped by Ireland's low corporation tax rate of 12.5 percent,companies like Google, Facebook and Ebay are driving demand.
