The Financial Crisis and the Real Estate Industry
The global financial crisis is becoming persistent and will change in the next 10-15 years the perception about investments and especially about risk.
If the evolution of economy is a cyclical one and the crisis from last years seems to happen in much shorter periods, we could say that the nowadays crisis is the biggest since the early ‘30s.
Despite its proportions, one of the most important characteristics of the global crisis is the fact that not everybody is in all this together. During these last years, the revenues of the financial institutions on Wall Street were huge (about 50 billion dollars in 20070 and so are the losses of this year; we could say that some individuals privatized the profit of the companies and the US Treasury nationalized the losses.
Generally, the losses will put a mark especially on the small investors or on the pension funds.
The financial losses, with a total value of over one thousand billion dollars, and the intervention of the US Treasury will bring consequences regarding the regulation of the markets and also the structure within financial institutions.
An important consequence of this crisis will be a period of very strict regulations for the financial capital markets, for the real estate markets and also for the transparency in estimating the risk level.
The implementation of the provisions of Basel 2 in the banking system will be accelerated and probably the regulations in the real estate domain will be speeded up in order to create a safer and more transparent environment in this industry.
BNR intends to make decisions regarding a clearer tracing of responsibilities for real estate consultants and also a database with transactions in order to contribute to the increase of transparency and the quality of information.
An important role in the development of professions in the real estate field should be played by the higher education; the universities should be orientated to the market’s requests, especially to the professions in the real estate industry.
The professional associations, which are dealing with the professions of this industry would have to watch for the observance of professional and ethic standards, the improvement of procedures and also to promote the continuous professional training.
Adrian Crivii, FRICS, MAA
