Bragadiru, a city with a population of 15,000 near Bucharest (southwest of the city), climbed among the ranking of cities near Bucharest by number of homes delivered, with more than 1,000 new homes, almost double the previous year.
Like Bragadiru, the rural town of Dobroesti is on the rise, too. With a population of about 9,000 at the latest census, Dobroesti had 544 new homes delivered last year, according to the National Statistics Institute, compared with 471 in 2018.
Developers also delivered hundreds of new homes in other cities and towns around Bucharest – Popesti-Leordeni (822), Otopeni (580) and Mogosoaia (166).
In the hope of a better infrastructure in the future, developers are betting on the areas around Bucharest. Cristian Erbasu and Dan Piturlea, two entrepreneurs with construction businesses are an example in this regard. They are working on a housing complex in Mogosoaia (which borders Bucharest on the northwest), whose first phase of 310 apartments will be completed in mid-2021.
“The start of the second phase, another 450 apartments, we will postpone it by one year. Although there is a lot of interest in it, people prefer to wait and see. However, we have a lot of pre-contracts signed for the first phase,” Cristian Erbasu says.
The development trend of satellite towns is also visible in other parts of the country. This is how towns like Floresti (near Cluj-Napoca, 2,593 homes delivered in 2019), Giroc (near Timisoara, 1,470 new homes), Navodari (near Constanta, 1,859 new homes) and Ciurea (near Iasi, 179 new homes) have expanded, National Statistics Institute data show
“If we look at other countries, they are going in the same direction. Suburban agglomerations are developing, which creates traffic problems, even when the countries have a well-developed infrastructure. It’s a price people are willing to pay to have better conditions for living and raising their children. These homes outside major cities are generally in demand from younger families with kids,” says analyst Aurelian Dochia.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)