Investment in Russian commercial real estate amounted to $2.41bn in the first quarter – 24 times the total posted for the same period last year.
Growth versus Q4 2012 was as high as 40%, according to CBRE.
Around 55% of the total investment was accounted for by Morgan Stanley’s property fund buying shopping mall Metropolis in Moscow. Foreign investments accounted for around three-quarters of total volume and reached $1.8bn.
CBRE said: “It is worth mentioning that some of them are foreign just by formal reasons. For example, the $370m acquisition of Four Winds business centre by the UK’s Millhouse Capital, of course, can not be considered as foreign investment.”
Millhouse is backed by UK-based Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
The firm said that macroeconomic risks are growing. These include the Cyprus crisis, which triggered traditional spring price adjustments of assets. GDP growth forecasts for Russia were downgraded from 3.6% to 2.4%.
In addition, the eurozone’s economy is still beset by recession and unemployment this year. France, eurozone’s second-largest economy, may fall into recession this year, following Italy and Spain, eurozone’s third and fourth largest economies.
