One of the future challenges of the Slovenian real estate market is attracting foreign investors. The key approach lies in creating interesting products for them, including plots of land with infrastructure and ownership already settled. These are some of the key conclusions of the 2-day Slovenian real estate development forum, which closed on Thursday.

Mitja Križaj from the Fundament company highlights what he deems Slovenia’s biggest problem: “Currently there’s no so-called developers’ money, that is, capital that would start new investments into new development products, where real estate to the state would start carrying the money flow.”

The Bad Assets Management Company (DUTB) announced on Thursay it would put the Nokturno residential facilities in Koper on sale on 1 October, and that the same plan would apply to Ljubljana’s controversial residential neighbourhood called Celovški dvori in the first half of October. The move will bring in some activity onto the Slovenian real estate market but is not expected to have an impact on it.

According to DUTB’s executive director Janez Škrubej, most of bad bank’s real estate does not create a money flow: “We have almost no business real estate. Our portfolio mostly consists of plots of land.” Jože Podgoršek, the president of the FIABCI real estate association in Slovenia, would like to see a vision for investing into degraded areas: “A good example is the Portopiccolo project in Italy, where a fantastic story was born out of an abandoned quarry.”

Unfulfilled potentials
Industrial and logistic real estates also have great potential. Investing in business real estate or renovating existing one of poor quality also opens more opportunities. Due to the expected sale of bad loans, experts have predicted a massive downward pressure on the prices.

Jernejka Drolec, Radio Slovenija; translated by K. Z