Romanians are addicted to real estate, they can’t wait to have a house in their name and nothing stands in their way. While some go into debt for 30 years to realize their dream, others make such fabulous investments with cash. Of course, no matter what happens with the impending economic crisis, it is unlikely that housing prices will devalue significantly, if not impossible.
In order to understand roughly what level Romanians are with money, it is worth considering that, in the first quarter of this year, no less than 58.2% of real estate transactions in Mioritic lands ended with cash, without credit banking. Even so, Romanians’ affinity for mortgages from one year to the next increased by 1.3%, up to 1.1 billion euros. This is the conclusion of the National Agency for Real Estate Cadastre and Publicity (ANCPI) in the latest study cited by Economedia.ro.
Romanians buy their house with the money down, that’s why the prices don’t drop
SVN Credit Romania draws attention to the fact that only 41.8% of homes were purchased through a mortgage loan, in the first quarter of 2023. In reality, the value may be even lower than that, considering that the total is recorded of registered mortgages, but it is not taken into account that that value also includes consumer loans with mortgages, respectively mortgage refinancing for existing loans.
Most homes with cash during the mentioned period were, surprisingly, bought in Brașov. This is more than 69.5% of the houses and apartments sold between January and March purchased in this way. The lowest percentage of purchases from own resources was achieved in Cluj, “only” 51.6%. More than half of the homes were bought from own funds in Bucharest/Ilfov as well.
According to the cited source, approximately 44.2% of the homes sold in Timiș County were purchased through mortgage credit, this being the second largest mortgage market at national level according to the number of new mortgages registered in 2023, after the Bucharest – Ilfov region. Cluj ranks third, followed by Constanta and Braşov in the ranking of the regions with the most new mortgages in the first three months of this year.
“2023 started with a 21.1% annual increase in the total value of new mortgage loans granted compared to January of the previous year. February brought a decrease of 0.9%, while in March there was an annual decrease of 9.3% in the total number of new mortgages granted compared to March 2022”, states the report published by SVN Credit Romania.
