Some smaller malls

Almost an year after the Italians from Immobiliare Grande Distribuzione (IGD) have purchased Winmarkt shopping centers from the NCH investment fund, the head of the company that manages them says with a calm gesture that the difficult economical period is affecting less his stored, comparing to others." Other shopping centers mall-type have a blend of tenants which sell products generally more expensive than the buying force of the consumer", declared Antonio Di Berardino.

Even though he admits "there is crisis for everyone, including us". The traffic in the 15 Winmarkt centers has gone down in January with 17% and February with 19%, and the preliminary data for March shows a fall of 20-21%. Even so, the first year in Romania for IGD will end this month "a little over initial target", which presumed income from rents of 19.3 mil. Euro.

At this level, the Italian's annual efficiency in Euro is over 10.5%, a good level, even in the actual context, when average efficiency of investments are estimated, in a CB Richard Ellis consultancy company report, at 8.5% for the best commercial properties."I was the first manager of IGD that came to Romania, in the august of 2007.I don't regret the price that I have paid. Maybe after a half an year we would have negotiated better, but this doesn't matter now." The purchase of the Winmarkt stores from the NCH investments fund has been the second big transaction on our commercial buildings market- 182,5 mil. euros.

What matters in Di Berardino's opinion is the tenants blend development, especially by the way of selection of the commercial anchor, in other words the big tenants, grocery store salesman, electronically devices and IT. Winmarkt signed for the bringing of contracts Carrefour Express in three stores and Domo in the Bistrita unit, 4 contracts of the electronically devices trader being extended (the company is present in 4 Winmarkt spaces who's renting contracts expire in 2011).

In some cases, like the Galati complex,a supermarket will not be included in the blend of tenants, each store following to be analyzed - "for example, the people from Bistrita aren't used to go to restaurants." Restaurant areas and café's will be opening in only some of the 15 centers, depending on the consuming customs of the locals.

(…) Some developers or retail project owners say that the solution to the salesman problems is not exclusively the shrinking of the rents, but also they're way to make business analysis." Surely our retailers are suffering. But if you sale for 500 euros per square meter per year, what can I say? It's just that you are not representing the future", declared Di Berardino.

In the Winmarkt case, the average rent for project in Galati is 28 euros per square meter, average level for the whole store network. But even of the income from the IGD rents were to decrease by 20% after the renegotiations,the investing efficiency in the Winmarkt network would still be above average,that means 8.6%, in the hypothesis that the income level for the first year's activity, about 19,5 million euros, it would maintain also for the next year. And that could weigh in the future, when the competition will increase including in the cities that were not initially on the developers scale model.