The seccond annual BalREc - Balkan Real Estate Conference is over...
It lasted two days and here is what it was all about :

PROGRAMME
Main Topic: The Real Estate Market on the Balkans – Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia Highlights: Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Northern Greece


Day 1

9:00-10:15 Panel 1 – Challenges and solutions to growth – structural aspect
Keynote speech – Why invest on the Balkans?
City planning, legislation, investment projects. Best European practices used in PPP-s: Public Private Partnerships.

10:30 - 11:45 Panel 2 - Challenges and solutions to growth – financial aspects
Europe's financial crisis and how far will it spread? Will its effects reach the real estate market of the Balkans? Are the Balkans still the green spot on the crisis map? Yields on the Balkans versus yields in Europe. Will the volume and rate of international capital flows be affected.

13:00-14:15 Panel 3 - Industrial property market
Market entry barriers – problems and best practices Location, location, location ... Romania – the Balkans blue chip Are the first speculative projects in Bulgaria going to set an example for the developers. International competition – why developers and their clients prefer one location to another.

14:30-15:45 Panel 4 - Retail Property Market
Malls, shopping centers and retail chains – never ending story or reaching the “limit”? Malls, Malls, Malls – does the inflow of retail center projects threaten to drown the small-town markets. Malls vs. malls – which concept is the right one for the Balkans. New mall formats – retail parks, outlet malls etc.

16:00 - 17:15 Panel 5 - Office Market
Which are the next business parks?
Are the office markets in secondary cities about to take off?
Where do Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia stand in the rental cycle?
Do tenants get what they look for?

Day 2

9:00-10:15 Panel 1 - Highlight – Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia

10:30 - 11:45 Panel 2- Residential Market Development
Has the train left the market? Does the market retain more potential to explore? Next bubble or calculated risk? Has the time for luxurious property come on the Balkans?

13:15 -14:30 Panel 3- The holiday property market – sea, mountain, spa or golf?
Risky outside, profitable inside? Investors and lifestyle buyers – who will pay for all those apartments? Development of the secondary real estate market Has Bulgaria turned into a golf destination already? Bulgaria, Montenegro and Northern Greece – bad examples and good practices.

14:45-16:00 Panel 4 - Maintenance, property and Facility management
The new requirements of the market of quality What do buyers look for? Do offered services match property prices?

As most of the participants in it I had curtain expectation… which sadly weren’t cover.
So I’ll try to make a overview of all the discussions on the topics…
day 1
Panel 1 : After talking over the situation on the Balkans, discussing the crises on the real estate market and the mortgage problems yet to come The conclusion was that all of the crisis shall have minor effect of the Balkan RE market with which I don’t agree… let’s put it like this – here in Bulgaria we have high land prices and high prices for a pretty low quality for the majority of the available spaces ( commercial, office, residential etc.) same is the situation in Romania. In Serbia there are only few big shopping centers aka. Malls and in Macedonia the “mall fever” has just started … it is well known that for young markets such crises will effect the most so sadly no one gave answer to the question what shall we do and how will the RE branch change if the worst case scenario happens.
The sad thing is that … well we all hope that we won’t have mortgage crisis and that we have salable land and projects at any price but unfortunately but the truth is something else.
As for the PPP-s – Public Private Partnerships we all know that we don’t have the law base to develop this kind of relations and in future aspects this shall be the major factor for the urban and the transport developing. Yet again we try and unfortunately we have the results – Highway contract problems… Time delay etc… So most of the municipalities are not ready for such relations because of the law base and corruption.
The First Panel was THE optimistic panel where the crisis was discussed with a ironic – smile.

I shall share the rest of my exp. tomorrow because as you see there is a lot to be seid over the panels.
I will also include the leading participants in the panel...

I hope this thread will give "some" interesting facts over the oppinions of the RE leading companies.

hey how did I miss this thread!
Hope to hear (read) what you saw there!

Very interesting!

Please keep us updated!

Sorry for the pretty big delay...
had a lot of travelling and all of the holidays...
So....
After the fisrt coffee break started the second panel - Challenges and solutions to growth – financial aspects

Well as we all know we can talk over this for hours days weeks ecc... even centuries so all the thing that have been said in the first panel were repeated as this was a chewing gum.
The good thing is that we all recognized that there is a upcoming crisis and the situation in the USA RE - market, the bad thing is that by chewing the gum no one had an idea for somekind of buffer for the region.
Nevertheless when you see that more and more people recognize the real reason for the crise you begin to think that more people are looking for the solution sadly as always there were some people wearing pink glasses thinking that this shall pass untill the end of the year....
At 12.00 there was a lunch..... i am mantion it because it was interesting to let you know that 95% percent of the participants were like hungry animals the tipical balkan attitude :)
So after it was obvious that all the food was gone ... it was time for the third panel of the conference... - Industrial property market
It is already well known that Romania is the Major Playa' in the Industrial market ... Most of the Auto' construction is done in Romania (Within the Balkan Peninsula) yet it is expected that Albanian market shall develop as an industrial and the government is ready to give green light for the investors as reducing tax weight... coming soon continued

hehehe, maybe there was some kind of food expo nearby :D

Interesting first part, especially about the auto business.
So Albania is up to something big in the industry

Well Albanian and Ukranian market are away from their potential so auto business was not the major topic it was mantioned concerning Romania ...
Well as we look thru the market development rate in Monte Negro, Macedonia and Romania the next are Ukrain, Albania and Serbia in other words Real Estate prices in most of the european countries are pretty high so the netural way for the investitor is market with lower land prices and lower cost of labor.
As most of the analysis show Romania is adducent for the major industrial players incl. Auto industry (this is for now) while other countries like Bulgaria and Monte Negro are developing Tourism and Service branches...
No One was able to share axpectations how truly the RE market will develop and what kind of prices shaw we expect in the near future.

Panel 4 - Retail Property Market
One of the most interesting and eagerly awaited panels.
Malls,retail parks, outlet malls and all other varioations of the shopping centers.
Big square Boxes or enviormently apprpriate building well his discussion rise many questions. Does the inflow of retail center projects threaten to drown the small-town markets. Malls vs. malls – which concept is the right one for the Balkans.

Sorry but have to go ....
Continue in a couple of hours...