ULI Greece & Cyprus Young Leaders organised a networking event with Alexandros Moulas, Associate Director, Savills UK on 26 July at Borsalino Bar in Athens. Attendees networked with fellow industry professionals and met and exchanged experiences, views, and knowledge with Moulas.

Moulas is an experienced chartered surveyor with international exposure in valuations, financial appraisals, feasibility studies, development & design consultancy, and capital markets. He is currently an Associate Director in the International Development Consultancy team of Savills Global HQ in London. He is also an expert on residential and mixed-use developments in city and resort destinations globally.

The following topics, among others, were discussed:

• Real estate market outlook, trends and prospects for the next years
• Analysis of players (domestic and foreign) at domestic level and by property category (commercial, hotels, resorts). Who invests in the country, which properties they invest in and what difficulties they encounter?
• The banks’ role in the real estate market in the country and how they promote properties that are in the form of non-performing loans (NPLs). Banks are currently the most important ‘property vendors’ in the Greek market.
• The market for organised resorts in Greece and how the country compares with other more involved markets in the Mediterranean, e.g. Spain and Portugal. The main reasons Greece lags behind are the time-consuming bureaucratic procedures, the increased urban risk, and the general macroeconomic environment (political and economic uncertainty, unstable legal and fiscal framework, etc.).
• Analysis of the profile of the investment funds that have been deployed in resorts in Greece, e.g. TEMES – Olayan, Sani Resort / Andreadis – Oaktree, TEMES – Dogus, Hines – Daskalantonakis. All of the above schemes include a foreign investor (institutional or otherwise) in cooperation with a local partner with significant knowledge and / or presence in the hotel industry
• How Cyprus can be an example for Greece, as despite its small size, it has a very active real estate sector, a significant number of organised resorts and records record-breaking increases in bail-in and after. Incentives of the Cypriot government (eg transfer tax exemption and capital gains tax, reduced VAT, Citizenship & Golden Visa programs) have led to a rise in real estate. New markets have entered dynamically in Cyprus, such as Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
• The main role that ULI can play in improving the property market in various sectors, such as transparency in dealings with information exchange among the parties involved.
• It has also been suggested that such events are necessary and extremely useful for professionals in the field in order to exchange views on specific and non-issues of the real estate market.

Attendees included real estate developers, operators, agents, managers, planners, architects, engineers, builders, lawyers, and members of the public sector.

Though the Young Leaders group is targeted for those under the age of 35, real estate professionals of all ages attended.