The largest finalized residential projects are in the Militari, Titan district and on Splaiul Dudesti quay, and have between 1,000 and 1,800 new homes. Only a third of the largest residential projects in Bucharest are built in areas no more than ten minutes’ away from a subway station.
Around 41,000 homes have been built in Bucharest and Ilfov county between 2005 and 2011, according to data from the National Statistics Institute. Half of them are in large residential compounds, and half are either individual houses or part of smaller projects, with 200 apartments at the most.
The bulk of the new projects are dedicated to average income earners. The Militari Residence compound (1,800 units), Confort City (1,680 units) and Rasarit de Soare in Titan (988 units) are the three largest residential compounds built so far in Bucharest.
The vast majority of Bucharest’s population, around 80%, still lives in blocks completed during communist times in large working class neighborhoods, such as Colentina and Pantelimon, where the communist regime built around 50,000 homes in a few years.
Bucharest was about to become a major home builder, with 8,326 homes finalized in 2008, almost 1% of the city’s stock, but the start of the crisis significantly reduced the appetite for investments and three years of decline followed.
So, while in 2009 and 2010 Bucharest and Ilfov county saw around 6,500-7,000 homes built per year, as projects started during the boom period were completed, only 3,417 new homes were finalized in the first nine months of 2011, according to the National Statistics Institute.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)