Tracking where large investors invest can often be a pretty safe way of determining where to put your own money.

Even Burger King did this when MacDonald's opened up a new restaurant in town. Hence this technique is often known as the Burger Bar strategy: if MacDonald's if opening up, they must know something worth knowing!

The same is true for property investment because generally the factors that make for a sound business investment are the same that cause property markets to flourish.

And there are currently signs that the big players in the European property investment market are making Romania a key investment target as they believe, out of all the European markets, Romania will provide them with some of the best returns.

Immoeast - one of Europe's most prolific real estate investment funds - recently announced that it plans to channel around 20% of its €7.5 billion investment budget into the Romanian real estate market.

Decade of growth

Edgar Rosenmayr, an investment officer at Immoeast, is forecasting an upward trend in the Romanian real estate market for at least another decade.

"In Romania, we have the biggest portfolio in our overall investments and at this moment the Romanian market is also the most attractive for us.

"We are certainly cautiously optimistic when it comes to how successful our choice of properties is domestically [Austria], but we believe Romania will continue to be one of Immoeast's main targets in the following years, as well," said Rosenmayr.

He estimates the upward trend of the real estate and retail markets will be maintained over the next 10 years, though returns will no longer be as high as they are today. Hence, now is a perfect time to buy and long term the returns will still be good.

The fund managers believe Bucharest is the best place to achieve the highest yields currently in the Romanian office and retail sector.

"In the case of office buildings, we are particularly focusing on Bucharest, since the Romanian market is atypical and we believe in the other cities an office building cannot generate the yields and revenues we have in mind," said Rosenmayr.

The Romanian portfolio of the Austrian investment fund now includes 113 properties, with a total area of 3.85 million square metres, of which 44 are retail properties, finalised or under various development stages, with a lettable area of 894,000 square metres.

Immoeast recently increased its share capital by over €2.8 billion to finance the €6 billion investment programme targeting projects in Eastern Europe - particularly in Romania. Immoeast is now capitalised at €8.6 billion.

Romanian expansion

The fund plans to further expand its portfolio in Romania.

In one such project it plans to invest €300 million, together with European Future Group, in the next few years to build 8-10 logistic parks in Romania.

The total lettable area of logistic centres will be around 500,000 square metres. The locations of which have already been identified and, as is common these days, the standards will be equivalent to those in Western Europe.

The name Immoeast seems to be present in many deals in Romania recently, and is a huge vote of confidence for the Romanian property market.

Some of their deals include:

• Victoria Park business park in a €60 million deal (first deal this year)
• S-Park in a deal worth above €100 million.
• Takeover of the Pollus Center project in Constanta for €185 million (largest deal this year)
• Purchased 25% of Adama, a Bucharest real estate development firm, for some €60 million
• Bought the first two Euromall shopping centres of Galati and Pitesti, with the overall value of the deals in excess of €150 million

We can be sure such experienced funds, especially when investing on this scale, have done their homework. When a fund, such as Immoeast, invest heavily into a market this is a classic sign that the market has huge potential, as they are not going to invest billions of euros without doing some very detailed research.

It is also interesting to surmise why they are not investing anywhere near as much money in markets closer to home, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia or Serbia.

One can only assume out of all the markets they invest in they see Romania as having the largest potential - as Property Secrets have been saying for some time - we agree!

Airline routes

New airline routes - and especially budget routes are also a great indicator of business traffic into locations.

There is a large amount of investment taking place into (and trade being done with) Romania from Spain and Italy - especially in the property market. The links between Spain and Italy with Romania are historical and based on a similar language and culture.

So it comes as no surprise that EasyJet has just announced that they will start flying to Bucharest from Milan in October this year. They clearly recognise the huge potential for growth in both business and tourism developments in Romania.

It can only be a matter of time before routes are added directly from the UK to Romania on cheap airlines, such as EasyJet.

Interesting that EasyJet has chosen to fly to Bucharest and not the Romanian coast.

Similar to the Bulgarian coast, the Romania coast has a very short summer season and will always struggle to compete with other destinations such as those in the Mediterranean.

Similar decisions have been made by most airlines opening up new routes in Eastern Europe, from Wizzair to SkyEurope in both Poland and Bulgaria.

Property Secrets have long advocated that investing in the cities will offer investors the best returns for the lowest risk, and EasyJet's decision is yet a further, small, indication that they too believe the cities are where the money will be made.

Conclusion

If a large company has done a vast amount of research before investing billions of euros into a country's property market then you can be pretty sure they are confident the market has a lot of potential.

A simple strategy is to follow such companies and invest where they do so.

Clearly in this case, Romania has been given a big thumbs up by one of Europe's most successful investment funds. We doubt you'd far wrong if you followed their lead.