The office segment of the real estate market is hot. No sooner had the $30m Europe House deal had been sealed, that both the buyers (the Austrians from Europolis Invest) and the sellers (the Israeli from GTC International) announced projects for the Romanian market, worth dozens of millions of dollars.
Europolis Invest is an Austrian realty investment group, whereas GTC International is actively developing real estate projects in Central and Eastern Europe.
“The acquisition of Europe House is our entry on the Romanian market. However, we have at least another two or three such investments in the pipeline for Bucharest. The only problem is there are not many opportunities at this point,” says Wolfgang Lunardon, general manager of Europolis Invest. According to Lunardon, each of these projects will account for a $30-40m investment, which would propel the investments made by Europolis Invest in Romania to more than $100 million in the near future.
At the same time, Shimon Galon, GTC International’s country manager for Romania, says the $31 million cashed for Europe House are not enough. “The project needed $23m investments. We managed to sell it almost four years after we started it. We are already operating other projects in Bucharest,” Galon says. According to the GTC International country manager, the company will shortly obtain a licence and will start construction works for another building located in Victoriei Plaza.
“We are talking about three times the area of Europe House (13,500 square metres, i.e.). The building will be erected in two stages, and, in the first phase it will be an office building,” Galon said. The GTC International official would not comment on the amount of money invested in this project. “We also have a third project for Bucharest, related to an apartment building. Moreover, I also believe we could expand outside Bucharest, and Constanta is among the cities where we are looking for pieces of land,” Galon stated.
The same kind of strategy will be enforced by the Austrian company. “Ten percent of the Romanians live in Bucharest, so it is natural for us to be interested mainly in the Capital City. However, there are other cities, such as Constanta, which could provide us with various opportunities,” says the general manager of Europolis Invest. The company aims to invest one billion euros in the Central and Eastern European countries by 2006. ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro