Forton International: Retail rents in Bulgaria the lowest since 2002
Sofia's main streets are offering the lowest rents since 2002, according to consulting company Forton International.As of August 2010, prices are around 55 euro a sq m for a store on some of Sofia's elite streets, as opposed to 120 euro in 2005, when prices were at their peak. Rents have gone down by a further 30 per cent in the second quarter of 2010 in Sofia, while in other cities across the country, the decline is between 43 and 50 per cent, Forton said in a report.Meanwhile, 163 000 sq m of new retail area was made available on the market with the launching of several new malls, such as The Mall in Sofia, Galeria Plovdiv and Grand Mall in Varna, which means that there are now more than 485 000 sq m of "modern retail area" constructed in Bulgaria. This translates into Bulgaria surpassing both Greece and Ukraine in terms of the amount of retail area per capita of population, with 64 sq m per 1000 people now available.Additionally, new malls which have been already under construction, encompassing more than 550 000 sq m of retail area, have been frozen indefinitely because of the crisis and because of decreased demand and the apparent oversupply.