Coming home after the wilderness years

"The Baltic countries have seen a strong economic recovery recently and are expected to keep on growing," claims Newsec's chief economist Arvid Lindqvist. According to Newsec, the revival of the residential market is also boosted by the fact that there is a shortage of other attractive asset classes in these markets. However, Ober-Haus is rather more cautious: "The Baltic states' markets remain sensitive to external factors. Negative news from abroad influences the expectations of consumers and investors," warns Raimondas Reginis, senior market analyst at Ober-Haus Lithuania; but he does add that after the drastic changes of 2008/2009 the market now has a sufficiently solid basis from which it can grow.Slightly higher demand"The recovery at the start of 2011 was halted due to problems in the overall economy and the bankruptcy of two banks in Lithuania and Latvia. This spring is showing high activity in terms of client interest in projects, but we have yet to see an increase in sales so