Romania is not like Bulgaria. Property Market Overview.
September 5th, 2007
| 
Print
| 
Tell a friend
Useless to say that Bulgaria is promoting itself as a great investment opportunity. I’m not assuming is not, I just claim that Romania is a better and safer investment and with bigger potential.
WHY?
Put yourself a few questions:
How often have you read or saw a commercial about investing in Bulgaria? I think quite a lot.
How often have you seen Romanian properties having commercial promotion in international media? Not that often!
This is not because developers in Romania don’t know anything about marketing. In fact they are big international developers with experience in markets like Spain and Israel. They don’t need to market outside Romania because they rely on local demand. This is a sign of very healthy market and fantastic potential. This is the sign that your investment will grow safe.
Bulgaria is promoting itself as the New Spain and for now it works. The investors are buying properties in hope to rent them to a growing number of tourists. Also they hope someday they will sell the house to someone who will pay twice the initial price.
Will the tourists arrive? Sure, but just because Bulgaria is cheap. Otherwise the tourists will go to Greece, Spain, Italy or France. And being cheap the Bulgarian investment won’t offer much of a rent.
Will it sale in big profit? This is really a difficult question. People would buy houses in Bulgaria mainly because it’s cheap. Yes, the country is nice, but is not as attractive as Spain, has no warm winter like Cyprus and is not seductive like Italy or France. So if the properties are too expensive they simply won’t sell. Doubled the actual prices and you will be able to buy a nice big house in fantastical landscape of Croatia or a flat in highly desirable Spain. This is why your profitable exit from Bulgarian property market is so questionable.
Romania is different. The property market is local demand orientated. The continuously increasing middle class provides a market for renting and selling properties with supply unable to satisfy demand for at least 15 years. This is your profitable exit.
CONCLUSION:
While Bulgaria real estate market growth depends mainly on foreign buyers, Romania property market is strongly pushed up by local demand coming from the new, very active and successful middle class. Amplified deal flow is expected for the next 10-15 years while the market supply and demand will likely to gain balance. Foreign investors will have a positive role but will not represent the main engine of this strong trend.
More about investing in Romanian properties in the Independent Guide
Write your opinion about the article