There’s a good reason why the foreign and local investors are so keen on quickly expanding on the market of construction supplies for homes, i.e. roofing tiles, bricks, plasterboard or ACC (autoclaved cellular concrete). The residential segment is the fastest-moving domain of the entire constructions market.
Residential buildings progressed by 22% in the second quarter of 2004 compared with the same time last year, maintaining the pace of the first quarter, clearly outpacing the overall constructions market growth.
Statistics show the volume of constructions works increased 8.6% in the first half, that is faster than the Gross Domestic Product, 6.6%, amounting to a little more than one billion euros.
The residential building construction sector saw 76.2 million euros (3,106.9bn ROL) in new contracts in the second half, 12% more in euros compared with the corresponding period of last year.
Residential building contracts were worth 54.3 million euros in the first quarter, confirming the situation in the field, where constructors were able to start working sooner than usual this year given a normal spring season, without being delayed by bad weather as it happened last year.
However, residential buildings are still making little impact on the dynamic of the market in general, as they account for a mere 12% of the total.
Romania is far from the European average in terms of new residential buildings. Still, it is precisely this gap that points to a certain development stage of the local market that foreign investors are counting on for profits, analysts say.
Wienerberger Group for instance, has already invested 38 million euros on the Romanian market and announced it would invest a further 60 million euros in the next five years. Its investments will go to brick, roofing tile and pavement factories. Wienerberger is directly involved on the brick market and operates on the roofing tile market through Bramac (which it controls 50%) and Tondach (in which it holds about 50% along with French Lafarge Group).
Investment plans worth tens of millions of euros are being carried out on the market of plasterboard, ACC, lime, ceramic tile or other finishing materials every year.
On the other hand, the development of the mortgage credit on the Romanian market gave a boost to the construction of residential complexes made up of houses or villas, which has been on the rise since last year. It also induced a rise in the prices of land and homes last year; the trend will maintain this year, as well, real estate market analysts say.
adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro