Russia, Ukraine, Romania make up the hottest trio on Eastern Europe's real estate market, with a growing number of investors in Western Europe gluing their eyes to these emerging eastern markets, where a series of mammoth projects are being realised, reported portfolio.hu.

This was the key finding of the second ‘Real Vienna', a trade fair for real estate and investment with a focus on the CEE/SEE-region (Central, Southern and South Eastern Europe), which premiered last year.

A total of 248 exhibitors - companies, cities and regions - from more than 20 different countries are present at the three-day trade fair, to present city and infrastructure development projects, building developments, office space, shopping centres and much more.

The countries with the highest numbers of participants amongst the 140 exhibitors - that is a share of approximately 60 % - are Russia, Germany, the Czech Republic, Serbia, and Romania followed by Poland, the Ukraine, Slovakia, Great Britain and Hungary.

We have found the most impressing project at the Moscow and Yekaterinburg stands, but Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia were also present. The municipality of Cegléd was the only representative of a Hungairan town. It was seeking investors for the restructuring of its downtown area.

Hungary's TriGránit, the biggest real estate development company of Central Europe, put up an extraordinarily large stand, placing Bucharest's Esplanada project into the centre, and lining up other projects in the region, as well.

At one of the several panel discussions David O'Hara, managing director of DTZ's Russian unit, addressed the growth potential of the Russian real estate market. He underlined that beside oil revenues, the main engine of growth is household consumption, which holds the promise of huge expansion potential for both residential and commercial real estate projects. Underpinning his assumption he mentioned that rather stunning feature that a junior executive in the United States has smaller discretionary income than an employee in a similar position in Russia.

Owing to this, development activity picked up incredibly in Russia, since there is a shortage of both shopping malls and office buildings in the country, O'Hara said. Despite a decline in yields in the past years, transaction yields remained above 8% in Russia, which implies a premium of at least 200 basis points over Central European markets.