Moscow: GVA Sawyer participated in RREF Forum

Russian Real Estate Forum (RREF) took place in Moscow from 1st to 4th of October. Two conferences were held within the Forum: “REAL ESTATE MARKET 2009-2010” and “COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE MARKET 2009-2010: MANAGEMENT, OPTIMISATION, REALISATION”. GVA Sawyer’s representatives participated in the conferences: Vera Setskaya, President of GVA Sawyer, Evelina Pavlovskaya, Vice-President for Consulting and Yulia Kharchevina, Head of Shopping-Entertainment and Regional Real Estate Branch of the Brokerage Department.

Vera Setskaya, President of GVA Sawyer, delivered a report “Technical assistance provided by developers-consultants to banks in appraisal and realization of hypothecary assets” at the conference “REAL ESTATE MARKET 2009-2010”.

Yulia Kharchevina, Head of Shopping-Entertainment and Regional Real Estate Branch of the Brokerage Department, delivered a report “Tenant’s Profile – small and medium business” at the conference “COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE MARKET 2009-2010: MANAGEMENT, OPTIMISATION, REALISATION”.

Evelina Pavlovskaya, Vice-President for Consulting, spoke at the session CASE-STUDIES "COST OPTIMIZATION: COMPANIES’ PRACTICE".

On 13th of October, Vera Setskaya, President of GVA Sawyer, delivered a report at the Hotel Investment and Development Congress. Event’s organizer - IM EVENTS company, a part of Impress Media publishing house.

The major topics of discussions, organized during the congress, were:

• Hotels classification system: advantages and disadvantages, purpose and marketability
• Business conversion or 5 «pros» of the hotel segment
• Is it possible to convert office into a hotel: re-concept at the design stage and redevelopment of the existing building
• Future of the budget-funded hotels: opportunities and prospects in the capital city and regions
• Budget-funded formats not represented in the market: has their time come?
• Agreements with operators: can everything be foreseen?

The topic of V. Setskaya’s speech was “Projects’ re-concept. Can and should be an office converted into a hotel?” General conclusions of Mrs. Setskaya’s speech were as follows: conversion of an office into a hotel supposes the operator’s obligatory engagement, such a decision is to be taken only in case of the operator’s positive response, reconstruction and reorganization are to be carried out only on the assumption of the technical support of conversion by the operator.