Romania: Strong real estate market
The signs of a strong market are starting to show, as investments in real estate increased in the first half of 2019. According to official data from Cushman & Wakefield Echinox, various companies invested in real estate development in Romania, in the first half of 2019, with an increase of 6% compared to the same period of last year. The investment volume amounted to 410 million EUR.
At a local level, more than half of the country’s available real estate was acquired by the office sector (53%), followed by retail (28%), with industrial and logistics coming in at number 3 (18%). Bucharest remains a market leader for the highest investments volume (40% of the total real estate), while Cluj-Napoca is the second most promising, at 32% of all investments.
The most valuable transaction took place in Cluj-Napoca, where Dedeman purchased The Office project, for 130 million EUR, from NEPI Rockcastle and Mulberry Development, having a total rentable area of 63,000 sqm.
On the Central and Eastern European markets, Romania ranked third for the largest total financial investments, better than Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria. The Czech Republic is considered a market leader, with 1.9 billion EUR invested (a share of 45%) and Poland comes in second, with an investment volume of about EUR 1.3 billion (31 percent).
