Bucharest apartments, three times less affordable than six years ago

In 2002, the average wage in Bucharest could pay for a two-room apartment after 66 months, while at present a person in Bucharest with an average wage needs 200 months to save and buy the same housing unit. The average wage in Bucharest stood at about 188 euros in 2002, while a two-room apartment in Vitan cost 12,500 euros. The average wage in Bucharest is currently 2.5 times higher , 460 euros, while the prices of homes have gone up by more than seven times, to about 90,000 euros for a two-room apartment in Vitan. The ratio between the average price of a two-room apartment in Vitan district and the net average wage in Bucharest has witnessed a threefold increase in the past six years and home affordability has shrunk accordingly, reveals a ZF survey based on data from the National Statistics Institute and Coldwell Banker real estate consultancy. Consultants consider prices were undervalued in 2002, as few were those who could afford to buy a home due to the lack of financial-banking instruments. “There was a cash market back then, which expanded owing to the emergence of mortgage lending. (…) The prices of old homes were pushed upward by new products (…),” considers Andrei Sandu, manager of Media City real estate consultancy. This opinion is shared by the representatives of real estate consultancy CBRE Eurisko, who add that economic growth and the small number of new homes delivered in recent years also helped old home prices rise, and Bucharest inhabitants’ living standards have improved. The ratio started improving toward the end of this year, due to the steeper fall in the price of old homes and slight increase in wages, as revealed by data from real estate consultants and the National Statistics Institute.