“We need more Romanian capital in real estate, otherwise we only have two Romanians who can make acquisitions above EUR100 milion. Only the Paval and Tiriac families can make such acquisitions. We didn’t even have those until several years ago, because Tiriac only did development and the Paval family operated only in the retail sector,” said Silviana Petre-Badea, managing director of real estate consultant JLL.
Eight major deals involving real estate projects had Romanian entrepreneurs as buyers, who invested EUR250 million in all, according to real estate market data, with an investment yield of at least 7.25%. Out of this amount, EUR200 million was the acquisition of The Bridge office space complex in Bucharest by Adrian and Dragos Paval. The latest large office space deal in Romania this year was the acquisition by the Paval brothers of The Office in Cluj from NEPI-Rockcastle and Ovidiu Sandor in a deal put at EUR130 million.
“The acquisition of The Office by Dedeman had all the elements of a challenging deal but was a transparent process with a good outcome. Dedeman is already acting like an institutional investor.”
Another deal that involved a Romanian buyer was the buying of the office building housing First Bank, the former Piraeus, by businessman Dorin Mateiu, the former owner of the meat and cold cuts business Elit Cugir, ZF sources said. The deal is put at EUR20 million.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)