First summer of price hikes for apartments

Apartment prices in Bucharest went up by 10% between June and September, as the price per square metre reached 1,716 euros, indicates an analysis conducted by ZF based on advertisements in the largest ad publication in Romania, anuntul.ro. This increase is a first for the real estate market, given that summer is generally a time when prices stagnate rather than rise. The ZF analysis considered the prices of three-room apartments built between 1980 and 1990. “Unlike in other years, the summer months did not bring about either stagnation or decline, but an increase. During the last week, there has been a rise in the number of transactions, and I think it will continue until the end of September,” said Gabriel Dragomir, senior broker with the real estate agency Real Estate Grup. Dragomir says real estate agencies will close fewer transactions in the coming period, which could also cause prices to rise at a slower rate, as a result of the major banks increasing their interest rates. From the beginning of the year until September, Bucharest apartment prices increased by almost 35%, with their market value tripling over the last three years. In 2006, prices went up by almost 40%. In September this year, the average price per square metre reached 1,716 euros, against 1,280 euros in January. In other words, if an 80 square-metre apartment cost on average 102,500 euros at the beginning of the year, now the price has reached around 137,300 euros, i.e. a 4,000-euro increase, per apartment, per month.