The demand for housing has been up in the past three months in Romania, as against the same period last year, but the available offer has been on decline, according to the latest survey of imobiliare.ro.
On the other hand, the growth pace of the housing prices has been slowing down, particularly in the big cities.
The same study says that Romanians tend to wait a little bit more from the moment they start searching for a house until they actually buy one.
The authors of the survey said that housing demand has seen an annual rise of 14% in the second quarter of 2019 in the main six cities: Bucharest, Braşov, Timişoara, Iaşi, Cluj-Napoca, Constanţa.
The findings have also revealed that buyers are more careful about the product they want to purchase, take more time to get informed and delay the acquisition decision, although houses that are already concluded are more expensive.
The slowdown trend of the housing price hike is stronger in Bucharest, reporting a decrease by 0.8% as against the first quarter. Apartments and houses for sale in the Capital have seen a higher decline (-1.6%) compared to the rest of the cities (-0.6%).
Compared to the similar period of 2018, apartments in Bucharest are though more expensive by 2 percent and by 3.8% in the country. On the other hand, houses and villas are 2pc cheaper in Bucharest, and 3.5% more expensive in other big cities.
Except for Bucharest, where the average price per square meter has stood at EUR 1,310, apartments have recorder price hikes, the higher has been in Brasov (1.7%), where an average sum asked was EUR 1,220/sqm. Timisoara ranked second (+1.2%), Iasi (0.8%), Cluj-Napoca (0.7%) and Constanta (0.2%).
Bucharest has fallen two positions in the Quality of Living City Ranking, on the 109th, according to the Mercer survey for 2019.