Here is what happened in 2012:
1. The largest real estate investment outside Bucharest was finalized: the Palas project in Iasi. The development includes a shopping center, office buildings, hotels, a park, and the largest underground parking lot in Romania, with 2,500 parking spaces.
2. The construction of the tallest building in Romania was finalized in Bucharest – the 137-m high office building Sky Tower on Barbu Vacarescu boulevard. The tower built by Austria’s Raiffeisen Property is around 30 meters taller than Tower Center International in Victoriei Square.
3. The largest transaction involving an office project outside of Bucharest was concluded in Timisoara – Ovidiu Sandor sold City Business Center to South-African investment fund NEPI. Originally the transaction involved three buildings that cost almost EUR50 million. Later Ovidiu Sandor constructed another building and a fifth building is provided for, so the overall value of the deal could exceed EUR80 million.
4. Shopping center developers are setting new records in terms of speed of delivery: NEPI and Carrefour took around 11 months to finalize and open Ploiesti Shopping City. Immochan delivered the Auchan City project in the Giulesti district of Bucharest within less than eight months from the start. In 2011, Belgium’s K&S also took around eight or nine months to finalize the Electroputere project in Craiova, which had been set up in a former industrial facility whose structure was kept, as was partly the case of the Auchan City Giulesti project.
5. Austrian S+B finalized the biggest real estate investment on Magheru boulevard in central Bucharest, Magheru One. S+B renovated and reopened a building located at No. 1 Magheru boulevard. The Austrian company invested EUR20 million in the almost 80 year-old building and turned it into a modern, highly visible building, with around 1,000 sq m of commercial space and around 3,000 sq m of office space.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)