Real estate consultants are hoping for a year with no significant changes in Bucharest apartment prices and believe the first half of the year can only bring downward adjustments as the economic context remains unfavourable.

Seven consultants, real estate managers or representatives of the most visited websites, were asked by ZF about the trend of apartment prices this year, and the only conclusions that can be drawn are that the first half may bring price drops, but not at the same level of the past two years, while consultants are reluctant to make projections for the second half of the year.

Extreme "bets" came from Regatta agency consultants (an increase of between 10% and 20% for the yearend) and by the representatives of Magazinuldecase.ro website (a decline by 10-15%).

Consultants are reluctant about making too precise projections in the context where there are many questions still hovering with regard to the housing market: how will the "First Home" programme be modified, how long are banks still going to wait to get their money from developers and when are foreclosures going to start, what will be the trend of the economy, will there be another year of recession?

To conduct this survey, ZF requested information from the biggest real estate consultancies operating on the residential segment (Coldwell Banker, CBRE Eurisko, DTZ Echinox, Regatta and Neocasa), as well as two of the most visited real estate ads websites.

While most consultants believe the market may still go down, Regatta representatives say starting this summer, provided that no further "disruptions" occurred, prices would go up slightly, with values ranging between 10 and 20%.

The real estate consulting services and brokerage market was estimated to be worth 50m euros in 2008, but in 2008 plummeted by approximately 50% amid the falling number of transactions. @