Advantage Europe

It is our pleasure to welcome you to the 2008 Europe Real Estate Yearbook. Inside these pages we take an in depth look at real estate projects, trends, and key industry players throughout Europe, Russia, and Turkey.

Despite some stifling effects from the recent credit crunch, the real estate -industry remains an immense and robust market, with €690 billion of significant sales documented in the commercial property market place in 2007. Europe has not remained untouched by the tightening credit market but as Dr. Holger Schmieding, Managing Director of Bank of America in London, puts it, “Europe has not completed its cyclical upswing yet. Expect a rebound in spring.”

With 804 fact-filled pages, the fifth annual edition provides comprehensive information on current major project developments in 32 countries along with an overview of projects in the pipeline. We would like to thank our local partners, editors, publishers, and researchers, for their detailed regional knowledge and invaluable assistance, without whom this book could not be realized.

Our thanks also go out to every company and organization that has supported this effort with a company profile or fact sheet. Without these and the advertisements it would not be possible to distribute the Yearbook free of charge at major fairs and real estate conferences worldwide. And we cannot forget the staff, who have been dedicated to seeing this detailed project through to fruition.

In this 2008 edition we examine a wide variety of topics. Readers with an interest in unique architecture won’t want to miss the photo-rich editorial exposé on Daniel Libeskind, Founder and Principal Design Architect of Studio Daniel Libeskind. In Mr. Libeskind’s words, “Architecture tells a story about the world, our desires and dreams.”

Of course real estate has not escaped the increased focus on the critical importance of sustainability, a development examined in detail in our Industry Trends pages. According to Professor Tony Ciochetti, MIT Center for Real Estate, “These days you cannot even think about developing a new building or purchasing an existing older building without taking sustainability into account.”

Our homepage, www.europe-re.com, and the daily newsletter continue to prove a popular and growing success. The daily newsletter now claims 15,000 subscribers worldwide and the website produces 160,000 page views per day. Here you can find not only the latest real estate news, market trends, and research topics, but also a complete archive of all our past Yearbook editions.

We hope you enjoy your trip through Europe with this 2008 Yearbook.