Lessons from MIPIM (in General)

• With oil in 105 dollars and the experts to predict for the upcoming years prices up to 150 – 200 dollars, there is no turning back in world real estate market: The Arabs and the Russians together with the Ukranians (alphabetical order) will continue to capture larger and larger market shares in the world market. Their projects become more and more impressive as the years are passing, the companies who dominate these markets are really huge, their ideas are innovative and this pace is expected to continue for some more years, until the “lust” for properties in these countries will cease.

• The businessmen coming from Israel are BY FAR the ones who know best how to do business. The stand of my company was in the tents with the name AZUR, not in the main building of the exhibition. Thus we had half visitors than the stands in the main building (mainly the areas called 01 level and Riviera). But in the same time around one third of the visitors were businessmen coming (or with origins) from Israel. They were the only ones searching all the market, stand by stand, to discover a company that can be interesting for them. I personally met some of the top businessmen in the world who really came to me, asking me in few words “this is us, who are you and what you can do for us so as to collaborate?” While others were checking just few areas, spending most of the time out enjoying the nice weather, the people from Israel gave me once more the explanation of why they are considered the best in business worldwide.

• The interest for Real Estate business has many more good years to come. The visitors of MIPIM reached almost 29.500 (keep in mind that the entrance was for them 1.440 euro + 19,6% Vat, so no “tourist” was there) and the meetings were held from the morning till the end of each day.

• Tell me whatever you want, but do not tell me please that there is not money available for Real Estate deals worldwide. The problems of the world economy have not stopped hundreds of companies being active in the market, have not disappeared the cash flow. What was missing this year was the money coming from the aggressive speculators (like the ones who have borrowed 30 dollars for every dollar they had as equity). Honestly I never liked this kind of deals, because they are not based on healthy economical basis and they are very vulnerable to “periods of turbulence” (did you read the last book of Alan Greenspan? VERY interesting…). So, you have money available for any serious deal. What you do not have this year (and probably in 2009 too) is investors willing to pay huge prices to crazy owners, reaching leverage of 90 – 95%. Thus the money which exists in the markets will continue to be invested, but its rulers will ask for better prices, they call them “more real”.

• Continuing the previous approach, let me add that there are so many sources of money which are totally unharmed by the financial crisis that you would be surprised if you could just know 1% of them. Institutions that have real money and need to invest it in A Class deals are present in the market, happy these days because they will have again the upper hand in the market.

• The new era of Real Estate has risen. Now that the easy money will be history for almost everyone, the demands of the clients to the Real Estate brokers will be much higher than the past. People will collaborate with the ones they trust, but they will search also for the “capable smaller ones, with better market feeling and better connections, able to provide them deals that the “big brands” cannot reach / do / find / identify”.

• The really BIG businessmen, the ones who respect / admire and appreciate, are very simple people. They sit down and discuss without vanity (we call it “fitze” in Romanian language), they focus on the reality and they do not have to prove to you every five minutes that they are really great. Ofcourse they will provide themselves with a better way of living, but they know and never forget the basic rules of business (comparing to some lately rich Romanians, who come to the table behaving like they are the Gods and we should obey to any crazy demand they may have).

Tomorrow the second part.