Over 500,000 houses and apartments were built in Romania in the past decade, while the total house stock might exceed the threshold of nine million units this year, according to a study by Storia.ro, based on the data provided by the National Institute of Statistics.
Almost half of the houses and apartments built since 2008 until last year have two or three rooms.
Residential constructions have gained momentum in the past year, with 2017 being the third best year after the Revolution in terms of construction of new houses and apartments, with 53,347 houses put into service.
The peak has been reached in 2008 and 2009 when 67,255 and 62,520 dwellings were concluded.
Most of the dwellings, almost 257,000 have been developed in the countryside in the past decade, while 252,000 new houses and apartments have been built in the urban areas.
At the same time, almost 17% of the new dwellings delivered in the past ten years, meaning 85,618 units, have been built in Bucharest and Ilfov. Cluj ranks the second (43,093 dwellings), Constanța (31,651 units) and Suceava (2,039).
On the opposite side, the counties where the less numerous dwellings have been erected are Caraș-Severin (1,979), Teleorman (2,183) and Tulcea (2,253).
Romanians have also changed their preferences in terms of dwellings, with a growing appetite for the functional spaces and for the more practical ones regarding the purchase price and maintenance costs.
Overall, the two and three-room apartments have been the stars of the past ten years, representing almost half of the total units delivered during 2008-2017 (245,000 out of 500,000).
Last year for instance, the two-room houses and apartments topped the residential building sales.