During the Residential and Built to Rent panel held at CEDER 2024, Luciana Giurea, Head of the Residential Division at AFI Europe Romania spoke about AFI’s project, Home North, a built-to-rent residential project brought to the core of the business area, which will come to the market in March 2025. Explaining the concept of built-to-rent, she said “Especially for built-to-rent, (…) we are going to do this sale again and again and again. So, we are building today so that in ten years from now, 15 years from now, when a person is going to come and rent to still have access to a modern building, a modern apartment.” She mentioned that AFI is trying to build a community and add further functionality to their product: “We are bringing a social hub, we are bringing a co-working space, we are bringing a gym that is available for everyone. (…) If I am expanding my family, if I am downsizing my apartment, I can find in the same building two rooms, three rooms. Four rooms, a studio.” She added that people’s needs are changing all the time, which is why it is most beneficial to create mixed-purpose products which satisfy the end users’ needs.
When asked by moderator Claudiu Bisnel, Managing Partner at Brisk Group, whether there was a market for built-for-rent products in Romania, the participants at the Residential panel had different opinions. Luciana Giurea was confident that AFI was going to “build an industry” in the field of built-to-rent.
Jan Demeyere, Architect and Co-Founder of Speedwell, admitted that there was indeed a market for such products, but that it was not of interest for their company due to the difficulty to finance such a project in the current Romanian environment: “I think there’s a huge market for it. But it’s very equity intensive.” To complement this opinion, Alex Skouras, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Alesonor, said that there was a need for a shift of mind for the market to be ready for this product.
Cosmin Savu-Cristescu, Managing Director of REDPORT, added: “If you talk about built-to-rent, (…) I think the most important panel you need to make here is the panel with the bankers. Once you have a panel with the bankers and they decide and tell us a certain time schedule where they will implement specialized financing products, then automatically everybody will have such a market.”
Dan Fleșariu, CEO of WIREN, shared his opinion that the future would bring “a shift of financial and economic power between generations, and the generations that are coming, they are not so much generations of homeowners.” To add to this point, Andreea Ciobanu, Chief Marketing Officer with Hagag Development Europe, expressed her belief that the built-for-rent market is currently a niche-market, but that within 10 years, clients who currently choose to have an instalment with the bank might opt for a rented home, instead.
