Raiffeisen Bank has helped to finance the development of more than 350,000 sqm of office space in Romania, Silviu Toma, the bank’s senior director, said at this year’s CEDER conference. The conference was organized by RPMG at Radisson Blu on May 17 and brought together more than 350 real estate professionals. “If we make a comparison to the situation a few years ago, funding has become more accessible for future real estate developments. Interest rates are at the lowest level. Capital availability and project debt ratio, all of these matters are now favorable,” Toma said. He added that there are fewer active developers on the market, but they are more educated and responsible. The bank takes into consideration several factors before agreeing to finance a project. These include tenants, the technical elements of the buildings and other economic criteria. “We are one of the banks that have supported the real estate sector for a long time, so we have the advantage of owning a database of thousands of transactions that we have evaluated, and these figures help us a lot in analyzing funding and determining the behavior of a tenant,” Toma said. “The repayment of a loan is between 15 and 20 years, which means overcoming two or three economic cycles. It’s more important to have rent and stable costs than just looking at the value of the project.”
