With specially designed areas inside its branches and mobile sales teams, BCR is attempting to gain as big a slice of the burgeoning market of new home transactions as possible.

BCR, the largest bank in the system, has recently launched a new financing concept for real estate, which brings together direct partnerships with real estate developers and tailors offers for final buyers.

The "Real estate centre" concept has been implemented in 22 branches of BCR network, where customers can visit dedicated areas under this brand, to consult with advisers who specialise in real estate investments and financing. Six regional centres will coordinate the 22 sales units (with 10 in Bucharest), where the mobile teams will operate to secure partnerships with real estate developers.

"(...) We have specialised management for each real estate developer," said Dorin Cojocaru, the executive manager of the retail loans Department of BCR.

BCR will negotiate specific financing schemes with developers, while the latter will provide recommendations on the bank's financing options to customers purchasing a house. In addition, the bank personalises the financing option for the final customer, in terms of the customer's contribution and the amount borrowed.

So far, BCR has sealed partnerships with 35 real estate developers in Bucharest exclusively.

Cojocaru explains, however, that around 80% of the demand for real estate loans concerns financing deals for old houses (second market), which is still covered by the bank's traditional branches.

The concept of specialised real estate financing centres is gaining ground on the domestic market. BCR's move follows the same route as Raiffeisen Bank, which launched similar branches in 2006. Bancpost has also trained a specialised sales force to sell real estate financing, but has not created any specialised uni