Investors are still on hold today. As Property Forum’s recent survey showed, two-thirds of investors are expected to continue to take a ‘wait and see’ stance and look for a better vision of the future in the coming period. But, as the speakers of the investor expectations panel of SEE Property Forum 2024 showed, there are opportunities available all over CEE, including Romania.
In the transaction market, there is a huge gap between sellers’ and buyers’ expectations and that needs to be corrected for the investment market to intensify. In the UK, the market is recovering after hitting bottom, interest rates are decreasing, and the value of investment was €26 billion in the first half of 2024, up from the previous year, explained Mirela Calota, Director Deal Advisory – Real Estate and Infrastructure at KPMG London, the moderator of the panel. In Romania, we had quite a few transactions and that may give an optimistic view to the future.
There are two ways to look at investment activity; one is to look back at past activity and one is to look into the future, said Andrei Vacaru, Head of Capital Markets CEE at iO Partners. “If we look at the last year, Romania and Poland performed better than others, but my feeling is that we hit the bottom. That’s why I would tell those investors who ‘wait and see’ that it may be a good time to start investing,” explained Andrei Vacaru. Retail is an asset class that is underrepresented, which is why there were transactions in this sector in the last period. “I am expecting to see some significant transactions before the end of the year,” said Andrei Vacaru.
One of the trends that leads to new investments is nearshoring. One of the targets where companies are looking to move parts of production is Romania. “Romania is a large country, the second-cheapest country in the EU, but it also has some bottlenecks,” explained Gijs Klomp Mrics, Business Development Manager at WDP. “But we see things happening, and that is a good thing.”
Talking about investing in the office sector, Victor Constantinescu, Managing Partner for Romania & Co-Head of Real Estate at Kinstellar, showed that the local market is incredibly resilient as vacancy rates in Bucharest are very low.
In Romania, yields are more attractive compared to Germany. Also, there are transactions made in Poland and Romania, that are not seen anymore in Germany, said Dieter Knittel, Head of CEE at pbb Deutsche Pfandbrirefbank. “A lot of people are talking about CEE now. It is a completely different market than the ones in Western Europe or the US and things are happening,” said Dieter Knittel. “Apart from challenges, there are opportunities in business in CEE countries, including in Romania, and we will see that in 2025.”
