TECNOBORSA SCPA - Per lo Sviluppo e la Regolazione del Mercato Immobiliare

Tecnoborsa SCpA - a joint-stock consortium created through the Chambers of Commerce for Regulation, Transparency and Development of the Italian Real Estate Market - promoted the First European Real Estate Summit, in collaboration with UNECE - United Nations, Economic Commission for Europe - by involving government representatives of more than 50 european countries, NGOs and international operators.

UNECE started opening an international dialogue on these issues and, through REAG - Real Estate Advisory Group, a group of experts from both the public and private sectors to which belongs Tecnoborsa), became active so to extend cooperation between european countries. Particularly, so to promote investment opportunities in the so called Transition Economies.

To fill this gap, it has been adopted the Land for Development Programme - LFDP. The drafters of the programme used as their basis the goals of the United Nations Millenium Declaration, wich calls for determined policies to reduce poverty and for public and private cooperation to achieve practical solutions and concrete results.

The development and implementation of a coherent and effective land policy, which can turn land into an asset for the population of the Transition Economies, is necessary. This objective is important for various reasons. First, there is a need for a more accurate and specific definition of land policy. Secondly, the issue of land sales is sensitive and there is often a lack of political will to allow access to private ownership of land. In addition, in many central European countries, there is still the residual problem of restitution land claims that can make property markets uncertain and discourage investment. Thirdly, land is often split in rural and urban, local and national areas. This fragmentation complicates the development of coherent and unified land policies. Finally, there are no easy ready-made models that can be transferred from the advanced industrial countries for the use by transition economies.

The objectives of the Land for Development Programme are:

establishing a pan European network of government officials, international experts, and private sector representatives to develop land policies and to foster cooperation and experience sharing: the programme will help governments to develop a viable and feasible real estate market in a mid- and long-term perspective;
helping integration and development of Real Estate markets;
encouraging partnerships between the public and private sector to stimulate the actions necessary to achieve a coherent development of real estate markets in transition economies: members of the programme will have the opportunity to discuss the problems they face in their countries, exchange views and opinion about different ways and means of improving property rights system, land policy and other correlated issues;
formulating practical projects as demonstrations of concrete development instruments for governments: a dialogue between representatives of member countries will be promoted for both facilitating investments and harmonizing valuation methodologies;
preparing a Survey of the current state of progress of all transition economies with regard to their real estate markets;
elaborating and presenting at regularly held Summit, a well-defined programme of work for the LFDP in 2002-2003.

In addition, to improve land policy in Transition Economies for economic and social development, during the Summit three important key features have been focused:

to break barriers against creation of clear and coherent law with respect to property rights;
to statue valuation standards and methodologies for the European Real Estate market;
to develop a functioning mortgage financing system.

To achieve more effective integrated land policies, a high level Commission of top international government and business leaders will be created, under the guide of Hernando De Soto - founder and president of the Institute of Liberty and Democracy in Peru and author of "The Mystery of Capital" - . The Commission will prepare an action-oriented Report on the priorities and implementing mechanisms to help Governments achieve development goals in their land policies. The Report will be submit to Governments for their comments and their responses will be discussed at the next Summit.