Hungary for swingers
By Cliodhna O'Donoghue

BUDAPEST-GATE International Golf and Country Club has achieved exceptional interest since it was launched recently. The owners are expecting €70m in sales by the end of this week.
Buyers are believed to include comedian Alan Short, and TV3 news anchor Alan Cantwell. Christy O'Connor Junior - who designed the golf course here - has already snapped up his residence. Christy bought a four bed villa on the first tee box with its own pool and full membership of the course for €390,000.
Luxury
The new golf and spa resort development on the outskirts of Budapest launches its luxury apartment phases today, along with a release of off market luxury villas, at the Four Seasons Hotel where the agents expected to achieve sales in excess of €30m during today alone.
The exhibition runs from 2.30pm to 7pm and Sunday all day from 11am to 7pm.
Budapest-Gate International Golf and Country Club is a 5-star resort located an hour from Budapest airport and about 40kms from the centre of Hungary's capital which well deserves its "Paris of the East" title and is instrumental in attracting over 20 million tourist per year to the former Eastern Bloc country. The new resort is close to the proposed site of the largest film studios outside Hollywood.
Situated close to Etyek, the resort is built on a 750 acre estate and will contain a large health & beauty spa, sports facilities - including tennis and squash courts, parks and a world class business convention centre with seating for 1000 delegates.
The focal point of the resort is the Christy O'Connor designed 18 hole championship golf course stretching close to 7,300 yards around a 40 acre multi-recreational lake and a mix of luxury villas, town houses, apartments and hotel suites.
The golf facilities will be built to full USGA standards and we can reveal that agreement has been reached in principle to host the first ever Hungarian Open there which is planned for 2010.
The properties
One-bedroom ground level apartments start from €94,800 with two-bed apartments priced from €142,800 including large balconies.
The launch also sees the release of luxury penthouse apartments with large covered balconies starting from €234,000 with a choice of views.
Demand from investors is driven by the fact that all units come with 5 star standard fit out and a five year rental guarantee with 4% yield.
According to Brian Gorman of BG Property Consultants: "The fact that this 5 star luxury resort boasts a major conference centre, outdoor adventure pursuits, and a 30,000 square foot thermal spa along with the hosting of a major annual European tour event should ensure we continue to achieve record sales." The resort is due for completion in 2009 allowing investors time to benefit from significant capital uplift supported by a further five year rental guarantee to 2014 presents a very different proposition for investors in the region.
Brian Gorman adds: "Budapest Gate International Golf and Country Club is setting a new standard for golfing fraternities and successful investors with a turn key product with extended lead time to enjoy capital appreciation over an extended seven to eight year period."
Villas
Already the first phase of luxury front line villas have been sold.
Today sees the off market launch of the resort's second line luxury villas, located on an elevated site close to the course.
Christy O'Connor will be in attendance to meet and greet interested investors. The villas range from contemporary design to classical Romanesque build styles all with their own outdoor swimming pools on a quarter of an acre site.

- source: Independent.ie

O'Connor drives ahead with Budapest golf plan
By Andrew Cave in Budapest

Christy O'Connor junior, the Irish golfer and golf course designer, is joining the Eastern European golfing boom with a £200m plan to build the biggest golf course in Budapest.
Budapest-Gate, a £200m golf course, hotel and residential development on 280 hectares near the Hungarian capital, was unveiled at the KPMG Golf Business Forum in Budapest.
Mr O'Connor, who has designed 33 golf courses in Europe, the US and the Caribbean, is working with developers Magyar Ingatlan Ingatlanforgalmazo es Ingatlanfejleszto. Work starts this summer with completion due in 2009.
"Golf is going to be massive in Hungary," said Mr O'Connor.
"I want this course to host what would be the first Hungarian Open in 2010."
Golf course developers are flooding into Eastern Europe, attracted by lower land prices and plentiful supply.
There are 134 courses in central and Eastern Europe, compared to 45 six years ago. KPMG, whose golf business team in Budapest is the largest golf advisory business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, says there are seven courses in Hungary but a further 12 are under construction.
About half of the world's 34,000 golf courses are in the US - about 6,000 are in Europe. Delegates at this year's forum included the developer of the first professional golf course in Bucharest, Romania and a businessman behind a golf project in Montenegro.
Andrea Sartori, the partner heading the KPMG golf business team, said: "There's phenomenal growth in Eastern Europe and Greece and Cyprus are also going to be big golf destinations."

source: telegraph.co.uk

KPMG Golf business forum Budapest May 2007

Another very successful Golf Business Forum took place in Budapest in May with cecta’s Gill Wilson again the moderator. 270 delegates from 42 countries attended this year’s conference. There is no doubt that the golfing boom in Central Europe is now in full swing with 134 courses across Central and Eastern Europe not including Germany and the 147 in Austria. In Hungary alone there are now seven courses with twelve more under construction and the latest development, announced at this conference, on the outskirts of Budapest, has a completion date of 2009. The KPMG golf business team in Budapest who masterminded this fourth Golf Business forum are forecasting phenomenal growth in Eastern and Central Europe. With the world’s golf course developers flooding into Central Europe golf tourism is now a reality and no longer a dream.

source: cecta

Of golfing and galas in booming Budapest

Investing in Eastern Europe Alex, my friend, I write you from your hometown. You don't come anymore. I understand, it is painful for you. So many years away and so many of your comrades, well dead or maybe worse - depressed and not going out anymore. How is Budapest? I do my best to tell you. For that time of our friendship and because you ask.

Alex, you would not know the place. Andrássy Ut is all lit up at night, like it was the Champs Elysées. Thousands of people out strolling and looking in shopping windows and nobody noticing the bullet marks from the Russian heavy calibre machine guns, which are still up there, over the shop windows. From the time they tricked your comrades and came back into the city, having said they would leave . . .

On corner of Andrássy, near the opera house, is all expensive luggage from Louis Vuitton, which is a brand for people to know and buy. I'm sure you have seen it in magazines, if these things interest you: I remember you telling me you met your father by that corner at night in November 1968 and ran away, ahead of the tanks and travelled over the fields to Austria, with only the clothes you stand in, and no suitcases, ha, ha . . This time, nobody thinks of those times. Alex, It was a gala Friday evening in The Meridien Hotel in Budapest. You do not know The Meridien.

In your time, it was the headquarters of the police and was a not a building you would have smiled at. Now is a big hotel with rooms costing €400 a night, owned by Arie Yom-Tov who is the proprietor of many businesses in Budapest.

In the time of his arriving from Israel, 18 years ago, he has made a big impact on the commercial life here. He is a very charming man, but also a very smart man, who is driven by his vision of making business and opportunity for wealth. He smiles a lot but when there is a problem his face darkens until the problem is solved. Many times, his staff are watching to make sure his face is not darkening . . .

This night, there are no problems because all is sweetness and light in The Meridien Hotel. Arie Yom-Tov is hosting a gala dinner to celebrate the launch of Budapest Gate Luxury Golf Course and Spa. As he explain to us, Hungary has no seas, so has many spas as compensation. Earlier, the sod had been turned (Alex, I do not mean the body of a Soviet soldier!) It was taking a big JCB to dig the hole for very large stone marking Hungary's newest - and best - championship golf course.

Best? biggest? Who am I to disagree, not knowing the other championship courses? Or one end of a golf club from another. According to the Irish investors, who were at the dinner and has seen the plans, this one is going to be among the top five, on par with say The K Club.

Christy O'Connor Jr is designer of this newest course in Hungary. He is an amiable man who also did the voice-over for the video of the Digging of the Hole for Foundation Stone. He sounds some place between Eamon Andrews and Terry Wogan, names you heard since you found safety in England since January 1959. But maybe he should stay at day job as Designer of Golf Course, of which he is very good....

Like Louis Vuitton and Armani, Christy O'Connor is a world brand. COC Consulting designs golf courses in many countries. Budapest Gate is his 34th course. Also, during the Gala evening, COC was made life president of the Hungarian Golfing Association, an honour which touched him so much, he promised to have the young people of Hungary in a few years playing golf to championship standard. Please don't laugh Alex, because he is a good and nice man and I don't expect you to be made a president of anything.

Also, he explains to me: "There will be four by par fives, four by par three, 10 by par fours. Now you know," he say with a smile at my ignorance. Also 7,200-yard drive, which sounds long in any language. The meal was lavish, with eight courses on a golf theme - Hole in One with strawberry sorbet and champagne - Alex, I print it in your language, so you get good laugh: Egy utesbol, Pesgoz eper sorbet and many more along those lines, ending with Lost Balls of Crotin de Chavignole.

Every time I turned, a waiter was by my side, maybe because I am guest and he is instructed to look after Irish investors who are putting up €150 million of the total cost of €300 million. The Irish investors, all heavy hitters in their own right, financially speaking, brought Arie to Ireland and showed him the possibilities.

He was, he told me, impressed. So the deal was done, on thousands of acres of Hungarian land, about 38kms outside of the capital, with easy access off the ring roads, which means ready purchasers for the apartments, houses and villas. But of course I am not investor, I write for newspapers and am only here because Arie and his Irish colleagues want other Irish investors to know about this development.

And why so many Irish doing business in Hungarian property? I ask Arie that, he laugh and say: "I don't know, maybe because we understand each other ... also, maybe, we come from countries with bomb, bomb, all the time ..."

I explain him, no more bomb bomb in my country and he twinkles and says, "ah yes, but you know, you live with bomb, bomb for long while, make you know value of life and money and having good time . . ." This was after floorshow, in which a Hungarian violinist showed his genius and the MC asked the ladies to look into their champagne glasses.

Shrieks and cheers because some of them - mainly wives of investors - found diamonds twinkling at the bottom of their glass. Just as, no doubt, will buyers twinkle in time as these purchases, good value by Irish prices, will show hefty capital appreciation within two to three years. Budapest is booming Alex, as you know. But please do not be tempted to even think of visiting, you would not like it ...

Units being sold off plans range from one-bed apartments from €110,000 to three and four-bed houses from €395,000 and €450,000. Budapest Gate, 4 Warner Lane, Leeson Park, D6

source: Kevin O'Connor, The Irish Times