The Irish Moritz Holdings, which discreetly entered the market at the end of last year, is developing a real estate project in Romania put at over 60 million euros in the Piata Victoriei area in Bucharest.
Moritz Group is thus joining the other Irish players already on the market, such as Ballymore and RI Investment Group.

“The first project will be a mix of offices and apartments in the city centre.

Property developer Engel East Europe N.V. said that it has signed a memorandum of understanding to take a stake in the planned development of several thousand residential units in ‘a central location in Romania’.

A due diligence process is scheduled to start within the next few days and the company and the sellers will enter into a definitive agreement regarding the project following its completion.

Signing of the final agreement is subject to the completion of further due diligence by the company, which will also start within the next few days. Executive chairman Jacob Engel said: ‘We are delighted to announce this latest development project, which we believe is one of the largest projects in Romania with projected scope of sales of several hundred million Euros.
‘Entering Romania - a promising market - is a result of our long involvement in the CEE residential property market and our intense analysis of the potential markets in the region,’ he added.
The project will be the company’s first residential development in Romania and will be built in several stages.

Goldale Limited, a company of the Tiriac group and the Spanish developer of real estate projects Riofisa Internacional have increased the share capital of Goldale Real Estate by almost 10 million euros, according to data from the Official Gazette.
This move is meant to partly cover the funding of a commercial project developed in Timisoara.
Over the past year, Spanish real estate companies have bought a lot of land in the Capital, as well as other big cities, to develop real estate projects, according to players operating in the real estate field. Spanish investors are interested in the potential the Romanian market has compared with the Spanish market.

Africa-Israel Europe and New Century Holding (NCH) will invest some 165 million euros in a Romanian real estate project, developed on a 120,000 square metre plot of land in the Timisoara Blvd area in Bucharest, where they will build a mall and five office buildings.

“The project will be built by Cotroceni Park on the former location of the UMEB factory in Bucharest, which was partly demolished. Africa-Israel Europe and NCH each own half of Cotroceni Park shares, by means of which we will make investments in several real estate projects in Romania,” stated Reuven Havar, general manager of Cotroceni Park.

The first project that the company will develop is Cotroceni Mall, which will, in the first stage, have a built surface area covering 170,000 square metres and for which investments worth some 100 million euros will be allocated.

Investors were presented with a range of ideas for investing in the booming real estate of Romania at a Cleopatra Hotel seminar on Thursday.
The seminar was organised by the Embassy of Romania with the support of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Ministry of Finance, the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Cyprus-Romania Business Association.
Oana Nisioi, Counsellor at the Romanian Agency for Foreign Investments, was bullish about property investment.

“The real estate potential remains huge,” she said.

Farmland, at around EUR 450-500 per hectare, is still only a fraction of prices in neighbouring East-Central Europe.
For example, prices are around EUR 5,000 in the Czech Republic and EUR 6,000 to EUR 7,000 in Poland.
Romanian land prices have already risen 35% in one year and are expected to reach EUR 3,000-4,000 in just a few years’ time.

The main reason for this is that the pressure to convert to development land continues.

The Finnish ambassador stressed that Romania has to be an efficient partner in the EU, while outlining the objectives of the Finnish presidency of the European Union.
Preparing for January 1, 2007 is important, but preparing for January 2 and beyond is even more important,” said Scheele, the Finnish ambassador, who added that he is satisfied with the sustained rhythm of efforts the government is putting in. Scheele reminded that both Romania and Bulgaria started the accession negotiations in 1999 in Helsinki, Fnland’s capital, saying that the two countries will be received in the union at the end of the Finnish presidency of the European Parliament.

Romania’s President Traian Basescu today met in Washington with U.S. President George W. Bush to discuss issues ranging from problems in the Black Sea region to bilateral economic relations and visas issues for Romanian citizens traveling to the United States.
“The President and I are friends. Romania and the United States are friends, and we”re allies. And as such, we”ve had an in-depth discussion about a variety of subjects,” Bush said at the joint press conference following the meeting.

He said Romania plays a “vital” role in the Black Sea region.

Citizens from European Union states will have the possibility to use their health insurance in Romania, under a government decision. The measure came following a change to a government ordinance issued last year regarding free circulation of EU and European Economic Area citizens in Romania.

The measure provides that health insurance policies signed in EU countries will be acknowledged by the Romanian insurance system. The document includes the concept of “partner” regarding people who benefit from the right to free circulation and residency in Romania.

A “partner” does not represent a family member, but the person living with an EU citizen, given the relation is legally recorded in the country of origin or it can be proven.

Neocity Group will invest 300 million euros in a residential project located in the east side of Bucharest.
The project is called NeoPeninsula and will be located near the Colentina River and Fundeni Lake. The project will comprise 26 blocks of flats 14 to 24 stories high and 2,700 living spaces each with one, two, three, or four rooms.

The project is developed on a 140,000 square meter area and will have 50,000 square meters of parks and playgrounds, parking lots and a commercial area.

The real estate project will also have a private beach, soccer field, tennis and basketball courts, a swimming pool, restaurants, an aquatic club and a kindergarten.

Construction on the site will begin in November this year and the first two blocks of flats should be finalized within 18 months.

British real estate investment fund European Convergence Property Company PLL, whose capitalisation stands at about 7 billion euros, yesterday signed the acquisition contract for the Millennium Business Center office building, the future office of the World Bank in Bucharest.
The British fund managed by Charlemagne Capital, one of the largest investment firms on the London market, is to pay approximately 40 million euros for the building in the centre of Bucharest, located on Armeneasca Street, close to the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

The takeover of the Millennium Business Center is the third acquisition by the Brits since the beginning of this year and their expansion plans on the real estate segment do not stop here.