“In the new market environment the prices of residential properties will be determined by the Bulgarian consumer and not by speculations“, Mr. Levon Hampartzoumian, CEO of UniCredit Bulbank, said at the opening of the BaLREc Real Estate Conference. He explained that in general he does not expect great enthusiasm for buying properties or great demand for loans in the near future.

“However, there is a renaissance in residential lending because life goes on – people get married, divorced, have children and continue buying homes“, Mr. Hampartzoumian added. He defined the situation on the real estate market as the coming of a new normality, i.e. a return to the normal price levels of real estates and to the normal levels at which deals are closed.

As far as industrial properties are concerned, Mr. Hampartzoumian says that their prices will depend mainly on the extent to which the economy will mark a sustainable growth and on the amount of foreign investments that will be made in Bulgaria.

“The return to normality is often considered a crisis, but it is actually not“, the CEO of UniCredit Bulbank further commented. According to him, the situation from two or three years ago was not normal – in the setting of hyper-enthusiasm a lot of money came to Bulgaria, lots of very good projects were fulfilled, but there were also many bad and problematic projects that could not be completed.

“Now it is just that the three-digit profit standards in the construction and real estate sector are going back to their normal rate, just like the balancing of the situation with crediting“, Levon Hampartzoumian said. In conclusion he added that no matter what challenges there are in construction and real estate, the banking system can meet them because the credits provided to this sector account for only about 8% of all credits.

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