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Real Estate: 2016 seen by real estate developers as the best in the history of Romania's residential market
Nearly 30,000 housing units will be completed in 2016 under residential projects conducted in Romania, up almost 20 percent from 2015, with 2016 seen by real estate developers as the best in the history of Romania's residential market, according to a specialist consultancy report released on Thursday.
The provision of housing units in Bucharest City and the environs is expected to reach a record high in 2016, at 13,000, up 20 percent from 2015. The largest share, about 53 percent of the total, is on the mass market segment, with 2016 also expected to witness a surge in projects for housing the middle class, some 40 percent.
Bucharest residential compound developers have completed and released increasingly more project in the semi-central areas or in near vicinity to important office developments, with nearly 1,500 housing units completed so far this year in the city's Aviatiei - Barbu Vacarescu and Grozavesti - Politehnica, as well as Tineretului quarters, according to a study by Coldwell Banker Affiliates of Romania.
The passage of a law on debt discharge by dation in payment and the exhausting of funds for the Government-subsidised First Home housing purchase programme combined to bring down the sales of new housing units, but that was offset by the provision of additional funds for the programme and also by most of the funding organisations coming back to requiring 15-20 percent down payments on mortgage loans.
The study is estimating an absorption rate in excess of 70 percent of the units completed in Bucharest in 2016, with the remaining to be taken up by the market, most of it in the next six to nine months, according to the business strategy of developers and macroeconomic circumstances. Data with the National Cadastre and Real Estate Publicity Agency indicate an increase by 8.6 percent in the real estate trades nationwide in the first three quarters of 2016 compared with the same period of 2015.
The largest real tests markets of Romania so far this year have been Cluj-Napoca, Constanta and Sibiu, with more thn 2,000 hiosuing units expected to be delivered in each; they are closely followed by Brasov, Iasi and Timisoara. The highest absorption rates of new offerings, in excess of 90 percent, have been recorded in Cluj-Napoca and Brasov, where instances of purchases on bank loans were fewer than say Bucharest City.