Austria's Europolis investment fund, now controlled by Volksbank group, is in talks to develop office projects, after five years of project acquisitions.
Europolis, one of the biggest players on the real estate market, decided to change its strategy on the Romanian market and become a developer, because of the low market yields and the poor quality of projects.
"This year, we'll start project development activities. At the moment we're in a phase that involves the acquisition of land in Bucharest. We made this decision because yields on the Romanian market are dwindling and the quality of projects is not what we're looking for," stated Marian Roman, general manager of Europolis Real Estate Asset Management, the domestic subsidiary of Europolis. Roman last August became head of Romanian operations of Europolis, replacing Stefan Gheorghiu.
"We'll develop office buildings with an area of over 10,000 square metres. For example, we're interested in developing office projects with as much as 40,000 square metres of space in the first phase," explained Roman.
Europolis will count on the development of office space, because of the current shortage of available space, and the demand from multinationals.
Since it entered the Romanian market, Europolis has invested around 454m euros in 5 real estate projects in various stages of development. In the wake of these investments, the company's Romanian portfolio accounts for around 21% of Europolis' portfolio across six countries.
The group's first acquisition was Europe House office building in Bucharest, for 30m dollars (26m euros), in 2003, which marked the first arrival of an investment fund on the domestic market. The value of the building has doubled over the past four years, and is worth around 70m dollars (50m euros), according to real estate consultants. Subsequently, in October 2004, Eur
