House buying in Romania

After writing so enthusiastically three weeks ago about the wave of new investors coming into Romania, particularly in the land and property sector, I have spent most of my time since then attempting to buy a property in Bucharest myself.

After wisely just paying for my father-in-law to build a country house for us on the outskirts of Oltenita, this time we decided to go ahead and do it all by ourselves. Option one was to buy some land and build a house as this seemed far cheaper and meant that we could design our own size, style and individual requirements. 

Luckily for me my room mate in the office is doing the very same and after seeing the hassle of just getting to the stage of planting the first spade in the ground to start digging I started to go off the idea.

I am still yet to fully understand what the PUZ, PUD, ARRRG and OUCH documents actually are, let alone the Byzantine fun to be had at the relevant sector City Hall that so clearly keeps flower and perfume sellers in business in Bucharest. Happily I did fully understand the heart attack that I would probably suffer before so much as a foundation brick was laid by trying to hold down my job and at the same time put together enough papers to deforest most of the Baneasa woods.

Once we moved away from the idea of building a house it seemed far easier to just go to an agent and pay a 3% commission (I’m in the wrong business!) to find us the house of our dreams for a little bit more money. Again naivety struck even after all these years here in Romania. When we said we want to spend between x and y for a 3-4 bedroom house I stupidly expected to receive some offers for houses in some way corresponding to these parameters. 

Instead the first agents we tried simply gave us everything they had on their books. This ranged from flats, when all we asked for were houses, to mansions that were more than double out budget with at least another 200,000 euros to spend to make it safe to walk through the front door, let alone live in the place. 

The usual response to the question “but I asked for a 3 to 4 bedroom house between x-y euros” ranged from “But it’s nice” to “oh, go on just think of the potential”. After hearing the word “potential” being attached to almost anything in Romania for the last 12 years, as soon as I now hear this word I am running for the hills. 

The piece de la resistance came when we were taken to a 7-bedroom “villa” in one of Bucharest’s most expensive streets. We were not given pictures before we arrived or any details – “the owner doesn’t allow pictures to be taken,” I was told. When I pointed out that the square meter size of this building was close to 3 times what we were looking for I was told that when I saw it I would understand. Happily for me this “villa” was a ruin that would have looked totally in place on the set of a Hammer House of Horror Dracula movie set and was in fact so dilapidated that it was too dangerous to actually climb the staircase.

When I asked how much more it would cost to renovate, the answer was “some money, but not much”. By this stage I was heading for the hills again. Suddenly our luck changed when my wife called me to tell me she had found the perfect place through some new, very competent, agents. Although the area was unknown to me I visited the house, which was more a cottage: perfect size, beautifully renovated and within our price range. Within 10 minutes we agreed to buy it subject to checking the documents. A meeting with the sellers was set for the following day. At the meeting some surprise was expressed when we didn’t want to hand over a 5,000 euro security deposit without even signing a pre-contract in front of a notary or checking legal title.

Instead we agreed to sign the following day once all the paperwork was presented to us and checked by colleagues at my wife’s law firm. Such beautiful renovations to the villa, such little paperwork allowing them to be carried out.

When we suggested that necessary paperwork should be put in place this went down very badly with the existing owner. Fortunately he is an intelligent and reasonable person so now everything has been postponed until Monday, whilst yet more pieces of paper are extracted from the land registry and we can hopefully sign something. Whilst this feels like it should be our new home, I am again at the mercy of the Romanian bureaucracy and legal system.  Help!

What’s worse is that we don’t even have a mortgage yet ourselves and the seller may still have the last laugh as we default on our deposit and he rides off into the sunset with our money whilst I start running to the hills one more time.  

* Oliver Meister is an English lawyer based in Bucharest working for CME, a US company that invests in television stations in Eastern Europe, including Pro TV, Acasa and Pro Cinema in Romania. He is also a director of Pro TV SA, the operator of the Romanian television channels CME has invested and is part of the management team that supervises the television station Studio 1+1 which CME owns in Ukraine