Romania and Moldova in July
We were fortunate recently to be able to combine two assignments within a single trip covering Bucharest, Romania and Chisinau, Moldova.
Flying in to Bucharest it doesn’t take long to realise that local taxi drivers don’t charge local rates to foreign visitors but fortunately the city has a very good underground system which we were able to use to visit various part of the city both cheaply and easily.
Our assignment here was to advise on a lease renewal for a government client. The property was located in the Primaverii / Dorabanti district which is a prime residential area with many large villas and an area favoured by diplomatic missions.
As usual our research included several hours of legwork, walking around to understand the location of the property within the area and to familiarise ourselves with the nature of the neighbourhood. We then met with several agents active in the market to not only identify comparable properties but also to understand where the market currently stands and what factors are currently influencing the market.
After making adjustments to reflect various factors we were able to apply the comparable evidence to the subject property to obtain our estimate of the market rent. We then subsequently met with the landlord organisation to discuss the lease renewal and also to raise various issues which the client required to be addressed at the property. The meeting was successful and we are now in the process of progressing the lease renewal.
Due to Chisinau’s close proximity to Ukraine there are currently limited flights so we opted to take the train from Bucharest. Despite the two cities being only c.360 kilometres apart the journey was 13 hours on a sleeper train which turned out to be a remnant from the Soviet era and which felt very much like a trip back in time with the carriages certainly not being affected by any modernisation.
Our assignment in Chisinau was to update the valuation of a city centre land plot for another diplomatic client. We had information on comparable land sales and listings but a major factor is the planning designation of each of the lands.
It is common in emerging markets for specific planning designations to be lacking and for regulations to be poorly enforced. However in Chisinau there is now a designation for every land plot and planning regulations are now being more strictly enforced leading to a greater impact on value.
We have successfully completed a number of assignments in Chisinau and have a very good local company that we work with in this market. As a result we were able to obtain access to planning designation details and also a document detailing the development permitted for each of the individual planning designations.
Having obtained all the required information, it was off to Chisinau station where there were three destination options shown on the departures board – Kyiv, St Petersburg and Bucharest. We chose Bucharest and a flight home where in the following week we successfully completed and submitted our update valuation report to the client.
For further information please contact Michael Lowes mlowes@emc-re.com
