EIRE 2010: investing in knowledge to promote recovery

As 2009 came to a close, international and Italian real estate operators found their balance sheets telling of a difficult year of stasis. But the news has begun to change now, and the word "recovery" is starting to be heard as often as the word “crisis.” This year of changes saw radical transformations in the market and its dynamics, no doubt, and even in some of its main players, and the sector has taken new directions that will never again become as distorted as those seen in past years. Talk of recovery is in the air, even if the recovery is sure to be long and difficult.

There already exist financial instruments and actors that are capable of making investments - their inactivity is dictated less by a shortage of opportunities than by the psychological aftershock of a year of immobility. From now on, prospective investments will be subjected to careful scrutiny, with every project and operation being meticulously evaluated in terms of quality and practicability - this is the new direction for every facet of the market. Businesses will still invest in marketing and events, of course, but final decisions will be weighed much more carefully and based on a tangible sense of utility.

The next edition of EIRE (Expo Italia Real Estate, from June 8th to 10th in Milan) is subject to the same trends, of course, and its organization and promotion has already begun. For our part, we are well aware that the fair itself and the commercial relationships that support it cannot be considered automatic, and that our task as organizers is to communicate our convictions about the real utility of this particular investment for operators. An active investment in knowledge and understanding is required to improve our sense of where things really stand without taking them for granted. EIRE is a place where individuals and businesses in the real estate sector can interact to create new opportunities, where specialized actors can meet and network in order to develop their business, heighten their understanding of the market, converse at a professional level with new types of competencies and accumulate other experiences from their line of work. Unless prepared and executed with an active and intelligent spirit, however, it will fail to achieve its purpose, simply enough, and our organizational efforts will be in vain. The fair is a magnet for professionalism and well-defined specificity, a nexus of investments and learning opportunities that, regardless of their size, origin or background, are inherently difficult to grasp in their totality - at EIRE, however, they come together at the same time and place, making that challenge a little less daunting.
Knowledge is the best investment that any entrepreneur can make. This is another reason why we have decided to collaborate with this weekly newsletter, contributing to Weekly RE Italy in order to publicize and make Italian real estate more accessible to an international audience.
A challenge like EIRE requires greater effort now, because keeping up images or being able to say "I was there" no longer suffice to justify one’s participation. It takes an unbridled personal commitment, which means preparing for the event with precision and studying the other players, including the ones you are already familiar with, in order to gauge their real significance. In addition to the players themselves, EIRE presents full, international panoramas in several key supply chains and sub-sectors: Retail, Tourism, Logistics, Residential housing and Office buildings. Furthermore, the international element continues opening up to important emergent countries that are proposing development opportunities in the Mediterranean region.
For three days of exhibition, EIRE 2010 constructs its own reality for showcasing concrete opportunities and cultural highlights and bringing together public officials, institutions, private operators, associations and international firms alike. Territorial development is the strategic driving force of the economy, and it must be tailor-made to the locations, cultures and traditions of whatever country or region it is applied to. We need to get back to the real meaning of entrepreneurialism, for which satisfaction is less about self-interest and personal wealth than it is about the passion of realizing a project to the benefit of the entire community. Rising to this responsibility leads to real satisfaction, and EIRE is how we choose to make our own contribution.