Shopping Malls In Danger

The shopping malls market segment could face a crisis in 2010, Emanuil Santev, head of real estate department at Hypo Alpe Adria Leasing told participants at the second regional conference Balkan Real Estate Conference (BalREc) on April 15 2008, as quoted by Dnevnik daily.

On the first day of the two-day conference held in Sofia's Kempinski Hotel Zografski participants could not find an answer whether Bulgaria's real estate market was going to suffer a serious crises.

“In terms of shopping malls one could say that a crises is approaching because almost every big city in the country has a shopping mall or is in the process of getting one” Santev said.

Another risky market segment was holiday complexes, Santev said. “It is expected that this market segment will be at a standstill in the next two or three years.”

“One can not say that Bulgaria's real estate market is a balloon in general because there are segments which are developing well, such as the office space segment where demand was still higher than supply,” Nicholas Spiro, DTZ's director of Central and Eastern Europe capital markets research said.

According to Krassimir Katev from Prime Management Capital - Sofia not a single deal for projects at a design phase had been signed in the past few months. “These projects are highly overvalued and sellers are not ready to take down prices. At the same time there is hardly a demand for such projects” he said.

BalREc is organised by Balkan Property Exhibition - BalPEx - the leading property exhibition in SEE, together with Colliers International and Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

It has a focus on the business opportunities in the property markets of Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia with highlights of several neighbouring countries.

BalREc takes place four days before the start of the Balkan Property Exhibition (BalPEx) which will be held at Inter Expo Centre on April 18/20 2008. It will have a focus on residential and holiday properties as well as business projects from Bulgaria and the region.sofiaecho.com