One year ago, CBRE promoted Luiza Moraru as head of its real estate management division for Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Since that appointment, the managed portfolio has expanded by 50 percent, and, at the same time the team has grown, so at the age of 39, Luiza Moraru heads a team of over 600 people, and is the only real estate consultant in Romania with a regional management position.
Luiza Moraru has over 18 years of experience in the real estate consulting market, of which the last 11 years has been at CBRE Romania, plus five years in Eurisko, a company previously acquired by CBRE. In the role of Head of Property Management CEE, Luiza is responsible for managing and expanding the portfolio of real estate in Romania, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. In 2019, the eight SEE countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and Greece) joined the area.
Over the past year, the portfolio of properties managed by CBRE has increased by 50 percent, exceeding 6 million sqm of office space, shopping centers and industrial premises.The Property Management team has also extended with specialists from different domains who bring added value to the real estate market, from the hotel industry to digital and technology experts.
“The property management market continues to grow both in Romania and in the region. It is a natural growth due to the increasingly diversified and, at the same time, more personalized services, which can increase the value of properties in the medium and long term. If, at this point in time, the outsourcing of property management services is 30-35 percent at the region level, we estimate that in maximum three years we will exceed the 50 percent threshold, in mature markets this percentage being of over 80 percent,” commented Luiza Moraru, Head of Property Management CEE, CBRE.
Customizing Property Management services for an office building or a shopping center include assigning a team dedicated to the project, Community Management – responsible for organizing specific events according to the positioning the building, the profile of tenants and their employees, sensorial marketing, and technology integration in the everyday life of occupants of the building by using mobile applications. All of these services have purpose of transforming the environment inside and outside a building so that the use of premises, whether it’s work in an office building or shopping in a shopping center, becomes an experience as pleasant as possible.
“On the office market, the decision to relocate companies is increasingly linked to what employees want, and the office and the community around it become decisive factors in attracting and retaining talent. Therefore, services that can make life easier for employees are extremely important. It is a chain reaction: employee satisfaction leads to loyalty, which results in the loyalty of the tenants, respectively lease agreements for longer periods, which translates into increasing the value of the properties for the clients we represent,” explained Luiza Moraru.
The same is true for shopping centers, where services and creating a pleasant experience have a major influence on the decision to choose a particular location. In Central and Eastern Europe, CBRE manages a portfolio of 138 retail projects, with a total area of approximately 2.2 million sqm, similar to the total office space area (2.3 million sqm). The retail sector has always been focused on consumer experience, and for CBRE this element has not been limited to retail, as experience is a transformative factor in any environment.
“With the help of a strong team and already having a large portfolio of retail space, we were able to develop the property management services for office buildings in a unique way. CBRE uses in a practical way the know-how acquired from the management of shopping centers and adapts it to the needs of office buildings. It is a complete transformation of the way the occupants of a building interact with space, from the moment they approach the building and can see online how many parking spaces are free and until they leave the office and find out what events happen at the restaurants or pubs in the area”, concluded Luiza Moraru.
In Romania, the property management department was set up at the end of 2013. In the last three years, the local managed portfolio has increased sevenfold, exceeding 770,000 sqm, including Sun Plaza Bucharest, VIVO! Cluj, VIVO Constanţa, and New Times Square, Aviatorilor 8, Floreasca Business Park, Lakeview, Campus 6.1 or Victoria Park.
