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Archived Articles
Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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East Central Europe: Peak within reach
After more than a decade of relentless real estate boom, the East Central Europe, particularly Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, are within the reach of market stabilization. The prices are still going up, mostly in the main urban centers plus in some preferred locations. In less developed countries, like Romania and Bulgaria, the market is still generally going up, but at far slower pace than barely a year ago. The market elsewhere, however, is either stagnant or already moving down. The foreign interest in investing is gradually disappearing. In some countries it once represented a double-digit percentage of the residential and office market. Not any more; the recent world financial crisis may even worsen this picture as the western banks become stingier and many companies and people go under. The capital returns in real estate in East Central Europe are falling steadily in the recent years. This phenomenon started from the best performing new markets, such as Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Now, as far as we can assess, this trend is moving eastward to Romania and Bulgaria, the two newest European Union members. The reason why we shouldn't be surprised of seeing this trend was that the past investments actually exceeded the absorption capacity in many countries for years. Since the early 1990s, when the capital returns were artificially high due to low supply of high quality properties, the situation on the market changed radically. Since the second half of the 1990s, the market was gradually flooded with many new residences, offices, and from a certain point on, with many new retail outlets. This trend first started in the best performing market economies, such as Hungary and Poland, so it was quite natural that these countries first experienced some fall of returns. Today, we see that even the late-comers and less well-performing countries are moving in the same direction, and are reaching the same lower levels of returns, meaning that the market mechanisms of regulation are working well also in this corner of Europe. Another trend in East Central Europe, also following the last year developments, is the falling interest rates. It isn't so obvious because the world main central banks are keeping their interest rates steady, following the moves of the European central bank. The recent financial crisis, however, may bring some changes in this trend.
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See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.
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