Investing in Europe- Greece and Romania

[Roxani Adam]

Hello everyone, I am now here so I am trying to learn as much as I can :) 

Me and my husband we want to invest in some properties in Greece and Romania. I was wondering if anyone has any experience in real estate market in these countries. 

Thank you.

[Alon Vigodorovits]

Hey there.

Romania has a great outlook. Here are the markets I was exposed to :

1)Bucharest is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe. It also has a buying power adjusted GDP/capita that rivals western european capitals. Combine this with an awful infrastructure and you get a market that is mispriced and full of opportunities. A drawback would be the seismic risk. You should get insurance if you are serious about putting capital to work here. Reading up on different neighborhoods and their seismic profile should help, but be prepared to pay a premium.

2)Cluj-Napoca is a student hub. A quarter of its 400k inhabitants are students. Parents are willing to pay up to get students living comfortably, considering that the dorms are generally horrible. There rent in Cluj is the highest in Romania.

3)Oradea is a european non-refundable money sink. This year Oradea gobbled up something in the range of 40 % of all the funds given to Romania. The city is developing really fast as a small tourist town. Prices have not yet caught up to places like Cluj, mainly because of the lower number of students not pushing the price up. Recently however, investments in industrial parks have opened up thousands of jobs that attract people from the neighboring counties and  prices are growing by the month. The rhythm of growth is only expected to go up, as the mayor responsible for putting the city on the map once again has an extremely long term focus on developing infrastructure and attracting companies that create jobs.

Hope this helped !

Alon