CEDER 2019 took place at the Radisson Blu Hotel in downtown Bucharest on May 29 in front of a record crowd of well over 300 people. It was a full day of discussions that analyzed how real estate investors and developers are adjusting their strategies to this late-cycle stage of the market, as well as the ways that our changing lifestyles are impacting the way we expect to work, shop and live.
But CEDER visitors were confronted by the future right from the beginning, as they were greeted by Pepper, the robot that CBRE introduced at the conference. Pepper called the conference to order and introduced CBRE’s market specialists who gave an in-depth report on the state of the Romanian economy and real estate sector. The robot was a real-life illustration of how the growing use of automation, robots and Big Data is having an increasing influence on real estate. These were topics that came up repeatedly during the five panel discussions covering the individual commercial and residential markets. The final panel of the day featured an in-depth discussion focusing on the current state of liquidity on Bucharest’s investment market.
Overall, panelists voiced the opinion that come what may in the next 12 to 24 months, Bucharest is in a far better position than the last time a major market shift occurred. Yields are far less aggressive today than they were a decade ago and developers are far more cautious, to the extent that over 40 percent of the office space now under construction has been preleased. CEDER 2019 was followed up by a DBH event sponsored by Anchor Grup at the Aperto restaurant in Bucuresti Mall.
