Futureal drops office and goes for retail over high land prices

“We would be interested in developing office buildings in Romania and in Bucharest, but the current price of land is so high that it is impossible to develop projects at reasonable costs,” said Tibor Tatar, general manager of the real estate developer. Futureal plans to wait until for the market to settle down before making any new office development plans and focus instead on retail developments.
The company is currently working on the EUR 100 million Gold Plaza complex in Baia Mare, with construction scheduled to start in one month. The 30,000-sqm complex to be developed by Futureal is owned by Austrian investment fund Immoeast, which forward-purchased the project last year. The project is 15 percent financed from the company's funds while the remaining amount is covered by a loan from a Hungarian bank, according to Tatar.
Futureal is planning other commercial developments on EUR 40 million worth of plots in Romania and is currently negotiating over a mixed development in Bucharest comprising retail, office and residential, similar to its Corvin Promenade project in Budapest, according to Tatar.
Futureal Group, which comprises Development, Futureal Fund Management and the housing division Cordia, holds a development portfolio worth EUR 1.3 billion in Central Europe.

Magda Purice