Margarita Zaeva: “Retail property traditionally shows the highest profitability”

In an interview for www.cre.ru, Margarita Zayeva, head of the retail real estate department at ILM, talks about the benefits of investing in retail real estate, the difference between the capital and regional markets, and the strategies of shopping center owners.

- Margarita, is it profitable to invest in commercial real estate now?

- When choosing between investments in different types of real estate, it is worth remembering that trading traditionally shows the highest return - 10-12% per annum. The debt burden of developers is forcing them to unprecedentedly reduce sales rates. The macroeconomic and political situation in the country is forcing a number of businessmen to get rid of their Russian assets. Retail chains, realizing the opening opportunities for the development and scaling of a business, attract funds by selling real estate assets, which can create opportunities for the acquisition of speculative objects. The institutional investor in the current market has finally received that choice of quality supply, which was not presented until 2016.

- What is the fundamental difference between the developers of commercial real estate in the capital and the regions of Russia?

- The retail real estate market in Moscow is close to saturation, while in some regions there is a prospect in terms of building new retail properties. For example, take the cities of the Urals, such as Perm, - here the provision of retail space is 170 sq.m. per 1 000 people. There is still a great potential in the capitals of the Caucasian republics - there is generally difficult to talk about the level of provision with high-quality retail space, since in most cities there are no quality shopping centers.

- What will the current situation in the retail real estate market lead to?

- The situation will lead to the fact that objects that are less compliant with the requirements of end users - by location, availability of necessary engineering, design features of buildings, a number of recently introduced objects in which the main pool of tenants has not yet formed, objects with aggressive leverage -  will not claimed by the end user - a retail operator, a restaurant, a bank, or a service company.

Read the full interview

Posted by www.cre.ru