Source: Cushman & Wakefield; Date: 2007

The number of influencing factors on the development of the retail market, and on the success or failure of investments in this real estate segment, is high, and includes much more than just population numbers and overall economic data. These, however, are positive from a European domestic perspective: in 27 EU member states, the roughly 500 million residents generated 11.7 billion Euros. Of that, more than half went to private consumption. Add Russia, the Ukraine, and Turkey to the mix, then the number of potential consumers increases to nearly 760 million people.

Particularly in the Central and Eastern European countries, the accumulated demand is high, and a clearly higher amount of private consumption expenditures is going to retail. While in Western Europe it is only roughly one-third (exceptions are Austria with 49 percent as well as Germany and Italy with less than 30 percent), in Russia, roughly twothirds of private consumption expenditures went to retail. Looking at relative growth of retail sales, the Ukraine and Russia, with an annual growth rate of roughly 18 percent are top players, followed by Romania (15.6 percent) and Bulgaria (14.8 percent). Turkey is at fifth place with almost ten percent. In other Central and Eastern European countries annual growth rates are between five and eight percent, and thus, are clearly above the Western European average of 3.7 percent. Here, Ireland with 6.1 percent is at the top and Germany with 1.6 percent at the bottom of the ranking.

A clear East-West gap is also seen in shopping centre space per head of the population. While in Western Europe, there are between 160 and 700 square metres per 1,000 residents, in Central, Eastern and Southeast European countries, there are between 20 and 180 square metres. That does not mean, however, that there is only a need for new developments in the East. On the contrary, in Western European countries, there is still a certain undersupply of modern spaces, and within the individual countries, large regional differences.