CAIRO: The one-day Euromoney conference entitled, “Egyptian Housing and Real Estate Finance” takes place in Cairo Tuesday. The conference seeks to provide information and exchange views for those working in and interested in the evolution, opportunities and future outlook of the Egyptian real estate market. Important figures from several fields, ranging from banking to real estate to government will be present to provide their views and exchange with participants. Examples of participants include: Sherif Oteifa, adviser to the Egyptian Minister of Investment, Omar El Hitamy, managing director of Orascom Housing Communities, Mohamed Abdalla, president of Coldwell Banker, Sahar Nasr, lead financial economist of the World Bank and Hala Bassiouini, managing director of the Egyptian Housing Finance Company. The conference will be divided into the five principle sessions, which will consist of panel discussions. The first session, “Financing Egypt's Housing Needs,” will delve into the supply of finance to the retail segment of the market. Here topics covered will be, inter alia, what innovations have occurred; whether targets are being met; what role banks need to play. This is followed by a session on “Investing in Real Estate Development,” which will examine the supply and demand for financing in the wholesale sector, and special attention will be paid to developer finance and how the financial markets may adapt their approach to the development of real estate for all sectors. As well, the impact of regulatory changes will be assessed amongst others topics. “Bottlenecks to Mortgage Market Development” will be the focus of the third session, with attention directed to the impasses and how they can be surmounted. The fourth session will focus on what can be done to meet international best practice standards through education and cooperation between industry players. Achieving this goal will allow Egyptian mortgage products to be more attractive to investors. The closing session will provide a synthesis of the conference's findings, from which a series of recommendations will be presented.
