Seven Hills obtained all the land for its project through lease agreements
A real estate development company owned by one of the world’s richest people, Israeli citizen Benny Steinmetz, has announced that it will finance three property projects in Kyiv that are estimated to cost over $1 billion.
Arie Schwartz, the general director of Seven Hills, a Ukrainian-registered developer that describes itself as the Ukrainian arm of Schwartz’s Israeli-registered company Scorpio Real Estate, told journalists in Kyiv on March 1 that the first of the three projects would be launched as early as April of this year.
“We are entering Ukraine’s bustling real estate market with confidence and [are] fully equipped to introduce new standards,” Schwartz said on March 1 at a press conference in Kyiv.
Seven Hills, registered in 2006, says it currently has the permits and land to develop a 1,200-unit residential complex on the edge of the city near the sleepy Holosiyivsky Park; 30,000 square meters of office and retail space in the Podil district located alongside the Dnipro River and a warehouse and logistics facility on 50 hectares of land near Boryspil International Airport.
Seven Hills obtained all the land for its project through lease agreements.
Schwartz said the residential complex, to be called Park Avenue, will cost around $200,000 to build and comprise four separate 22-25-storey edifices on a four-hectare site.
The first of the four buildings boasting 380 apartments is slated to be completed by the end of 2008.
Schwartz said Seven Hills expects to make a 45 percent return on Park Avenue.
The Podil project will include a shopping center and Class-A office space located across from National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, with construction scheduled to begin only in 2008 and finish over two years later. The project will cover its costs in up to three-and-a-half years, according to Schwartz.
Seven Hills’ logistics center will be situated a few kilometers from Boryspil airport, with works on the center beginning in a year-and-a-half.
Its parent company, Scorpio Real Estate, is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, boasting investment and development of projects in North America and throughout Europe.
Scorpio is in turn the construction arm of BSG Group, owned by billionaire Benny Steinmetz, who according to Forbes magazine, is the eighth richest person in Israel and the 583rd richest person in the world.
The US-based magazine estimates the net worth of Steinmetz, who has interests in finance, diamond trading, energy and property development, at $1.7 billion.
Martin Nunn, the director of Whites International public relations firm, which has been employed by Seven Hills, said Ukraine’s booming real estate sector still offers a lot of promise, as demand continues to exceed supply.
Scorpio is one of a handful of large foreign property developers to express interest in entering Ukraine’s booming real estate market, where prices have surged in double-digit figures over the past seven years.
