The average price of a three-room apartment in Bucharest has doubled in the last two years, a survey by ZIARUL FINANCIAR has found. The findings were based on ads published in the largest specialised publication in Romania, Anunt de la A la Z ("Ads from A to Z"), which publishes about 8,000 ads for sales of flats in its weekly issues.
There is no official flat or home price index on the Romanian market, just opinions of analysts or representatives of real estate agencies. Many agencies expected prices of apartments built before 1989 to stagnate or even go down last year, when they actually continued to rise by 20 to 50%.
The ads analysed were published on March 15, 2004, March 15, 2005, March 15, 2006 and June 12, 2006. Only those that mentioned the year when the building was erected and the surface area (to achieve an accurate comparison over time) were chosen. This makes about 80 ads per issue out of the some 2,000 posted for three-room flats.
The three-room reference was chosen because it is less likely to fall under the influence of speculators or of small real estate investors, which focus on studios and two-room flats for rental purposes.
The research took into account the asking prices of the sellers and the real estate agencies. The prices of the transactions are usually 5 to 10% lower than published in the ads, but the trend over time remains valid. A seller is now asking 1,090 euros per square metre of a three-room flat built between 1980-1990, compared with 535 euros in March 2004.
In only two years, the prices on the real estate market have doubled. Therefore an 80 square metre three-room flat now costs at least 87,200 euros, 44,000 euros more than it cost two years ago.
The sharpest rise in flat prices occurred in 2005, when prices rose by 65% in March 2005 in comparison to the same month of 2004. This increase equates
