IKEA IN BULGARIA
The first hypermarket of Swedish home furnishings chain IKEA in Bulgaria will open in Sofia’s Vitosha neighbourhood at the beginning of 2010. IKEA purchased a land plot of 60 000 sq m, worth nearly 12 million euro. The construction is expected to take up to 18 months, but a company to build the hypermarket has not yet been assigned. IKEA intends to open two to three hypermarkets in Bulgaria - in Sofia, Varna and Bourgas, investor.bg reported.

UNICREDIT FUND
UniCredit plans to set up a real estate fund, following the example of other major European banking groups, which would use parts of buildings that house the bank’s branches and other properties, Reuters news agency reported on July 20. The fund’s assets would be worth around two billion euro. Banking groups have invested heavily in recent years in real estate operations on the booming Central and Eastern European (CEE) markets. UniCredit is the leading group in the CEE region, by assets, and owns UniCredit Bulbank in Bulgaria, the country’s largest financial institution by assets.

PROPERTY PRICES RISE
For the months of May and June, supply on the residential property market surpassed the demand by 50 per cent, Katya Tsenova, the executive director of Address real estate agency, told a news conference on July 21. Address determined that Bulgaria’s residential property market is falling into a state of self-correction. Rising inflation and the higher interest rates charged by banks since the end of 2007 have contributed to the property price hike, Tsenova said. A record high price jump has been observed in Rousse, Plovdiv and Veliko Turnovo, by almost 27 per cent in all three cities. Sofia comes fourth with an increase by 21 per cent. The lowest increase has been determined in Sliven and Sandanski, by four per cent, and Stara Zagora by six per cent.

PLOVDIV
The average price of lodgings in older buildings in the centre of Plovdiv has nearly doubled over the past year, investor.bg quoted Europolis real estate agency as saying. At the end of June 2008, a sq m in the city centre cost 900 euro, while a year earlier the price was 520 euro. According to the company, apartments in newly built buildings currently cost 770 to 1000 euro a sq m and near-future prices of up to 1800 euro per sq m were not improbable.

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