Gabriel Popoviciu, Liviu Tudor and Dinu Patriciu are the only Romanians among the top ten owners of office space in Bucharest, a market put at three billion euros.
Immoeast is the biggest owner of office space in the Capital by far, with a stock of 192,000 square metres of lettable area and accounts for 20% of the market. Its portfolio comprises S-Park, Victoria Park, IRIDE, Bucharest Corporate Center and other buildings rented by Vodafone.
Below the top spot, competition is fierce, however: Austrian investment funds Europolis and CA Immo, the Germans at DEGI, developer Portland Trust controlled by Brit Robert Neale, and Romanian businessmen Liviu Tudor, Gabriel Popoviciu, Dinu Patriciu and Catalin Odea, each of them owning at least 25,000 square metres of office space, writes Business Construct magazine that comes out together with Ziarul Financiar next week.
The biggest ten players on this market own about 600,000 square metres of office space, which, taking into account an average rent of 16-18 euros/square metre generate annual revenues of 115-130 million euros, which money can be regarded as extremely important at this time, when most investors are short of cash.
The stories of these owners are different, but they are all connected to the 2005-2008 period when the real estate market skyrocketed, and investors thought they could do in three to five years what other countries did in ten to twenty, both in terms of office space, and in terms of retail space and apartments.
Therefore, Immoeast bought almost everything it could find in those years, helping to drive prices up, given that the Austrians were sitting at almost any table where owners announced their intention to sell.
Low-profile businessman Liviu Tudor quietly developed his business parks in Militari and Pipera, erecting buildings based on ironclad pre-leases. At that time, though not only then, he was sought by companies such as Ringier, Kraft Foods and HP for Novo Park, Dacia, Renault, Citi and Siemens for West Gate Park.
Europolis focused on projects close to underground stations and after having bought in Piata Victoriei (Europe Square) and Semanatoarea (Sema Parc, which is also known as Riverplace) is now focusing on development projects, as well.
All it took Dinu Patriciu was one move to become one of the main players on the office segment: he took over Fabian for about 50 million euros, thus getting five office buildings. Also true is that Fabian had, according to the latest information, about 76 million euros in debt. In addition, the closing for the Cubic Center in Pipera should be done soon and the final price set.
In Pipera, where Immoeast, Global Finance, DEGI, Liviu Tudor and Dinu Patriciu own properties, the vacancy rate exceeds 20% at the moment.
"From our information, there are about 70,000 square metres unoccupied in Pipera, out of a total of 300,000 square metres. As for the city centre, only about 10,000 square metres are unoccupied, and we believe the vacancy rate here will go to a healthy level of 5-10%," says Maria Florea, consultant of office space department of Colliers International.
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