“The real estate market is now ‘hotter’ than it was a year ago, when lending had gone down and everyone was expecting price drops. Those buyers in the market were stuck and waiting,” said Dan Niculae, managing director of Imobiliare.ro Finance.
“Now in the first quarter we saw balanced demand nationwide, up 3%, but supply down 7%. The fact that the banks started coming up with fixed interest offers showed right away and lending relaxed.”
In the first three months of this year, many buyers turned their attention primarily to new homes completed since 2020, Imobiliare.ro data show. The old market is gaining ground in many big cities, however.
For every old house in Bucharest or apartment in a building built before 2020, there were two potential buyers in the market, while for every new home in Constanta, four potential buyers showed interest.
The only major city where supply increased at the start of the year was Brasov. Buyers had 6,100 houses and apartments to choose from, 2% more than at the beginning of last year. Completely opposite was Bucharest, where the supply of homes fell by almost 20%. Even so, Bucharest has no national rival. Out of a total of 88,900 houses and apartments listed for sale in the country’s six largest cities, more than half were in Bucharest.
An increase of 5.2% could also be seen in real estate transactions. Between January and March, almost 145,500 houses, plots and apartments were sold in the entire country, according to data from the National Agency for Cadaster and Land Registration. A spectacular trend was recorded in Iasi County, where almost 7,600 properties were sold, which helped it overtake Timis, Brasov, Cluj and Constanta.
Apartments spent longest on the market in Cluj-Napoca and Constanta, according to Imobiliare.ro data. Timisoara’s homes were the fastest to find buyers at the beginning of this year.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)