Last year was still a good one for office furniture in Romania despite delays in delivering scheduled construction projects, local daily Ziarul Financiar reported. The total market for office furniture in Romania exceeded 80 million euro last year. According to Ziarul Financiar, an increase of 15 per cent was expected this year but the market had the potential to reach 100 million euro by 2011.
Romanian daily Ziarul Financiar reported that several foreign investors in Romania who had bought apartments in early stages of development, were putting those apartments up for sale at a significant profit even before construction had finished.
According to data published by Globalpropertyguide.com, house price increases in Europe over the past year ending in Q4 of 2007, were highest in Bulgaria. Bulgarian houses increased by 34.61 per cent, closely followed by Poland with a 33 per cent increase.House prices in Estonia increased by 23.38 per cent. Prices in Sweden, Lithuania, Cyprus and Estonia increased by between 11 and 19 per cent. Increases in other European countries were in the single digit range, with Portugal, Latvia and Ireland reporting house price decreases.
ECE Projectmanagement Bulgaria, the Bulgarian arm of German developer ECE, will shortly launch construction on its 40storey Europe Tower, company manager Plamen Ilchev told Mediapool.bg.
Turkish developer Kayi was named as the main contractor of Serdika Centre commercial and business complex, Investor.bg reported. The site cited a news release from Sparkassen Immobilien AG, the real estate investment trust of Erste Bank, and the German investor and developer ECE Projekmanagement Bulgaria, the two investors in the project.
Bulgarian Land Development BLD fund, registered at the London stock exchange, announced the purchase of five buildings from Dimitar Blagoev Printing House in Sofia. The buyer, a joint venture between BLD and private investor Norhtridge Capital, acquired a gross actual area of 29 000 sq m, Investor.bg said.
Buildings account for 37 per cent of overall energy consumption. In fact, buildings and transport collectively emit 50 per cent of overall green emissions, participants in the Building Green CEE Energy Efficient and Ecological Design for the Region conference concluded at the opening panel on April 23. The twoday conference, ending on April 24, is taking place in Bucharest, Romania.
With some exceptions, design, construction and operation of energy efficient buildings is a costly undertaking. Yet it will drive market transformation and become the norm in the future. This was the message of the second panel of the Build Green CEE conference in Bucharest.