A large number of leading international investors focus their interests on South East Europe, some of which realise projects worth billions of euro.

Bulgaria and Romania are particularly attractive in view of their recent European Union accession, economic growth, low property prices and their decreasing populations' purchasing power, investor.bg reported.

After the boom of the residential and business property markets, the two countries became attractive for industrial property developments.

A number of foreign and local contractors started various projects envisioning warehouses and logistics bases construction. According to international consultancy company Colliers, Sofia currently has 700 000 sq m of industrial area and Plovdiv has 250 000 sq m.

Romania is expected to offer more than 430 000 sq m of industrial area on the market in 2007. As a result, offers may exceed demand, Colliers said.

In the past several months, only large investment funds and companies announced their plans to enter the Eastern European market, with Romania in the focus of interests of most of them.

Some of the companies considered the market as a whole and included Bulgaria in their investment projects.

The main factor influencing their investment decisions was Bulgaria's relatively smaller property market. That was why most investors concentrated their effort on Central European countries and Romania.