I have travelled to a lot of countries in my life and I've lived in quite a few as well - but this was my first trip to Romania.

So what do I make of this country? What is its future? What can investors expect from this place? And, perhaps most importantly, is this the correct market and the correct moment to invest?

I'd like to be able to go a little way to answer these questions.

The aim of this trip for me and my colleague Oliver was to find some local partner companies that will help us to manage let and rent our future units in Romania.

So, what are the criteria that we will use?

Here's what we'll be thinking about:

1) The type of client - bearing min mind most of our clients are British or Spanish
2) The type of portfolio an investor is trying to achieve.
We need to select a company with a really good managing and post sales background that will satisfy the British buyers who are very used to the best standards and we need to combine this the slightly more personalised service that Spanish people expect from us according to Spanish standards!

This is the challenge for our group.

Meanwhile, back to Romania.

This country is undoubtedly fast growing. Let me capture some examples that explain perfectly what I mean.

Waiting at the traffic lights: on my left there is a Lamborghini. On my right I see a passing a horse towing a caravan. These kind of contrasts, that are common here, encapsulate the heady speed of change.

I also saw a MV Augusta shop in the centre of the city. Italian fashion. The most expensive motorbikes in the world - with a minimum price tag of €15,000. And I read that Ferrari is opening its first showroom in Romania next month. Romania will be the third central and Eastern European country to have such a shop after Hungary and the Czech Republic.

There is also talk of a Formula One Race in the next 5 years to be organized in Bucharest.

I am an Italian. Such things - super desirable cars, high-end fashion, luxury goods and the fact that F1 may come to town, they all speak volumes to me about this place.

Ryan Air launched their first flight to the country on April 1 (no joke!) after realizing that Romania's flag carrying airline, Tarom moved one million passengers over the last year.

Real Hypermarket, part of the German group Metro, is planning to invest €150 million in seven new hypermarkets in Romania this year, and planning to establish a chain of 21 units by the end of 2008.

These are examples that sum up just how rapidly things are changing in this country.

Many locals have lived in Italy and Spain over the last few years and they are now starting to move back.

One estimate talks of more than half a million people that will return in the next three years.

All of them, of course, will need to rent. Or they will buy apartments, especially in the capital city.

The average salary in Rumania is of €450 - but in Bucharest this is vastly exceeded. I personally spoke with a painter who was earning around €1000 a month.

And this was the same wage as he was on in Italy, were he had worked for the past five years.

Now he is leaving in an apartment with his wife and they pay €600 rent, while in Italy he was staying in a smaller - 80 sqm apartment, and had to share with 4 more people, all for the same money!

The couple are both working and their income is €1700 combined. This makes it clear to me that there will be a huge demand for medium class apartments that can be rented from €400 to €600 per month.

The governor of the National Bank of Romania said recently: "Romania must not focus too much on speeding up the economic growth (...) if there is a problem that this country has this is the increasing of the inflation rate, pushed by the severe drought last year and the rise in energy prices, which has already been announced, adding to which are salary pressures."

Petrol costs €1,30 per litre and in the capital there is still a serious traffic problem.

You need around 35 minutes during the peak hours of the day to travel 3 to 5 kms. So people who rent apartments near a metro station or other public transport will have huge benefits in the future.

The successive rises of the key interest rates will not have a significant impact on this year's economic growth rate, in my view.

Also the goal of the currency exchange rate should be to encourage exports rather imports while not affecting the inflation rate.

In terms of real estate, the central bank is demanding transparent transactions, simply because Romania has no official statistics of the actual value of its real estate assets.

And since public notaries are the only ones who have such data, the governor of the National Bank is determined to "hold them accountable" .

The first official information on the genuine value of property assets is expected to be produced in 2009.

One important feature I noticed about life here, while talking with locals, is the way that the citizens lack any shred of confidence in the public authorities. Can't blame them. Anyone can see that the public institutions and their leaders live for themselves and not for the citizens.

There is no doubt that urgent reform is needed to tackle this lack of confidence.

To draw up a contract for the supply of electricity with local companies can take you more than four hours on the phone and the paper work is extremely complicated for any West European and especially the British.

So, that's why IpropertyAssets needs to find a way to make our investors' lives easier.

I will conclude saying that at present I am writing this article flying back to Spain, and I find it difficult to put all my ideas and opinions in order.

But I think that the potential growth of this nation is huge and at the same time very scary.

There is a lot of work to do to try to educate people that they need to start working with different standards and a different outlook. They cannot any more use excuses such as, "Yes, but this is Romania."

All services in general need to be seriously improved and their conception of timing and organisation needs to be upgraded asap.

Corruption is also another negative aspect in this country. An example is the recent news about the chamber of deputies that has assigned a contract for around $160,000 to the firm whose shareholder is the labour minister.

This helps an appreciation of the big contrasts within this country. I would cite a famous phrase of Arisotele's to end my Romanian experience:
“ It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen."

Panos Tsigaras is Head of i-PropertyAssets España