Several banks are well positioned to be able to select from mortgage portfolios a sufficiently high volume of assets, which should be primarily standardised and then of high quality, in order to successfully issue securities to raise cash (primarily mortgage bonds), says Claudia Pendred, head of EBRD's Bucharest office.

"The emergence of mortgage backed-securities remains one of the goals related to Romania's mortgage market. However, international market conditions are highly complex at the moment, and a successful securitisation also requires a strong appetite from the part of potential investors," stated the head of the Bucharest office of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

She says mortgage securitisation requires a certain critical mass of portfolios accumulated by banks.

Many bankers estimate 2008 will be the year of mortgages, after the past two years have been dominated by the spectacular rise in consumer loans, partly converted into so-called personal loans used to buy homes.

For several years, the EBRD has provided financing lines to a series of domestic banks for them to grant mortgages worth several million euros.

Pendred considers mortgage legislation is solid enough, including creditor protection, and would not need any amendments.

However, at the level of the overall market, bankers continue to complain about the difficulties they encounter when it comes to collateral enforcement.

The legislative package on mortgage financing came into effect in 2006 and bankers stated the new stipulations allowed, on the one hand, for a rising share of mortgages in banks' portfolios, and on the other hand, for lower costs for these loans owing to the new refinancing possibilities, through mortgage bond issues.

Moreover, banks such as BCR or Alpha Bank, with important positions on the mortgage lending