According to Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute 11,000 new houses were built in Bulgaria in 2005.
Despite the thriving construction activity, there are still two people living in every apartment, on average. The most intense house construction in 2005 occurred in Bourgas, which has 474 apartments for every 1,000 people. The figures show that each person in Bourgas has a living space of just 19.05sqm.
Varna and Sofia also registered an increase in the number of new buildings. But according to statistics, Sofia remains the most densely populated city with its citizens owning less than 16.96sqm of living space per person.
Plovdiv was the town with lowest construction activity in 2005.
Traditionally, Bulgarians preferred two-room apartments but an increasing number of citizens in the smaller towns are now looking for three-bedroom houses.
The majority of the 1.6m buildings in Bulgaria are houses in villages nearly 1.6 million, were made of brick. These were mainly houses in villages. Most of the new constructions used modern building materials.
Paper plant to create 1,000 new jobs in Czech Republic
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is lending €170m for the construction of a paper mill in Opatovice (Pardubice Region, Eastern Bohemia). The new mill will meet the increasing demand on European markets for paper for newsprint and magazines and will have an annual capacity of 400,000 tonnes. The new company, called Labe Papir, will create some 150-200 new permanent jobs directly and another 700-900 employment opportunities indirectly mostly in maintenance, wood sourcing, logistics and other services.
Prices rising in the south east of France
Property prices in the south east of France, which includes Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, is the only place where property prices are currently growing at a similar or better rate than last year, according to FNAIM.
Property prices (resale property only) in the south east of France, appreciated by 10.3% in the first quarter of 2006, up from 9.3% during the same period in 2005.
Overall, demand for property in France has generally cooled in recent years, due in part to a rather flat French economy.
Microsoft opens logistics centre in Sofia
Washington-based company Microsoft Corp. will open a software maintenance, logistics, and technical assistance centre in Sofia, Bulgaria in the next 12 months. The firm had originally planned to open the centre in Serbia. It will service most of the Balkan countries including Slovenia, Macedonia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Greece.
At an official ceremony on 3 July, Microsoft's senior vice president Eric Rudder and the Bulgarian ITC Agency signed a memorandum for cooperation mapping out a long-term partnership between Bulgaria and the software giant.
Rudder also met with President Georgi Parvanov in Sofia, where the two discussed ways to boost cooperation in the fields of e-government and online education and training. Parvanov has ambitious plans to make Bulgaria a regional centre for the ICT sector. The President was particularly pleased with the fact that Microsoft is setting up a centre for free customer support that would serve the whole of south eastern Europe and Greece. The new centre will work in conjunction with a smaller Microsoft centre in Romania.
Microsoft chose Bulgaria and Romania for the construction of the maintenance centres because of the highly qualifies IT experts in the two countries, the stable economy and the development opportunities.
Meanwhile, Google's vice president, Vinton Cerf, has been in Sofia this week discussing prospective joint projects for fast-speed development of the IT society in Bulgaria. Google is considering opening offices in Bulgaria, the company’s vice president Vinton Cerf said during a meeting with Bulgarian parliament and IT companies. Cerf announced in the meeting that in order for Bulgaria to attract more companies like Google, it had to develop its internet services, education, employee qualification programmes and small business market.
At the moment, a relatively small number of Bulgarians conclude their financial transactions using the internet. One of the reasons was the lack of mechanisms guaranteeing the security of information, experts said.
€150m for road renovation projects in Poland
The World Bank is set to loan Poland €150m for a project mainly concerned with road maintenance and renovation work. Representatives of the World Bank and the Polish authorities signed a contract in Warsaw this week.
This is the third in a series of annual loans granted by the World Bank to support implementation of a government road works programme. The loan will finance 48% of the total costs of the project, estimated to be worth €313m. The remaining costs will be covered by the state budget and the European Investment Bank.
Bulgaria to build 700km of roads by 2015
Bulgaria 's government plans to build more than 700km of roads by 2015, according to prime minister Sergey Stanishev. The government is actively working on a new infrastructure strategy and the project will be officially presented within two weeks.
Last week, the Government unveiled part of the Trakiya Highway near Stara Zagora, which has added a further 15.6km of road towards Burgas.
Rental increases in Czech Republic close to 20%
Some 760,000 Czech households received unpleasant news when the Ministry for Regional Development (MMR) announced last week that regulated rents will be growing on average by 19.2% a year from January 2007 until the end of 2010, instead of the initially announced 14.2%, which was decided upon in March.
The updated numbers are based on the current prices of apartments and will be adjusted every year at the beginning of July to be in line with the development of property prices on the market, outgoing MMR Minister Radko Martínek said at a news conference.
The increase of rents will vary by region, but landlords don’t have to necessarily increase the rent to the maximum possible level. While rent can grow by up to 30.3% in Prague 1, in the industrial north Bohemian town of Ústí nad Labem, for example, the growth in rents could slow down to 3.9%.
Property owners also had reasons to cheer last month after the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg acknowledged compensation for a Polish landlady, Marta Hutten-Czapska, who allegedly was unable to pay for the maintenance of her property from the regulated rent income. Representatives of Czech landlords say they hope the Polish case will further their cause.
Worldwide News
Vietnamese open up their property market
Fresh legislation has been passed in the Vietnamese parliament which could open up the country’s property market to foreign investors, according to regional analysts.
The Law on Real Estate Trade, which will allow foreign investors and developers to trade in Vietnamese property, will come into force on 1 st January 2007.
Chinese prices continue to rise
Property prices in China's major cities continued to rise in May, according to official government figures.
Property prices in seventy large cities rose by 5.8% year-on-year, following a 0.7% price rise in May, according to the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Bureau of Statistics.
The price of newly built homes in China also rose in May, up by 6.1 percent.
Residential property prices in Dalian, a coastal city in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, climbed 15.2 percent year-on-year in May, the highest increase among the 70 cities surveyed.
"My sense is that the real price rises are much higher than the reported figures," said Yi Xianrong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a long critic of the property market.
Trading in the US becoming harder says developer
Developer George Wimpey reports that trading in the U.S. market, which accounts for nearly 30% of group sales, has now become difficult, with the forward order book falling 14% in value, according to Reuters.
"In the U.S., market conditions in Florida, California and Phoenix, which are our key markets, have continued to slow, affected by higher interest rates and a strong supply side in new and second hand homes, mainly new homes," said Wimpey Chief Executive Pete Redfern.
