Romania ranks first in the EU in home ownership, with 95% of the population living in their own homes.
In France, for example, only 57% are owners and in Germany it was just 46.7% in 2022.
According to a report published by Hotnews, an apartment in Bucharest costs 6.5 years of work, working on the “Housing Affordability Index (HAI)” model which measures the number of years of work it takes for a person in a given country or region to buy a home.”
In Bucharest, it’s about 6.5 years old, while in Cluj it takes 11 years. Before the 2008 crisis, and a collapse in real estate prices, it was about 22 or 23 years.
“To give you such an idea compared to other countries, I think that in China it takes you about 40 years to get a house, and the Center of Europe is about 14 years of work needed to buy a house. So, in our country they still seem quite cheap,” explains the chief economist of the Romanian Commercial Bank, BCR, Ciprian Dascălu.
A quarter of all real estate transactions are in Bucharest
Persistent problems in the residential real estate market in Romania are represented by regional disparities in terms of demand and supply of housing and the low degree of inclusion and financial intermediation in the less developed regions of the country.
A quarter of all real estate transactions are in Bucharest. About 28 percent of the transactions are concentrated in the main regional centers in the country, namely: Cluj, Brasov, Timis, Constanta and Iasi.
In Bucharest and Timisoara, residential real estate assets are undervalued, while in Cluj-Napoca and Brasov they are overvalued, and in Constanta they are correctly valued, according to the NBR.
