Is 6-7% yearly yield acceptable for Buy&Hold EUROPE investments ?

[Emanuel Toma]

I wanted to ask some advice on something: I have stopped our Buy-to-let investing for about >1 year now because the prices of properties in Targu Mures (ROMANIA) (the small town I live in) grew and kept growing (so are the prices in the major cities of Romania). I was looking of a yield (gross, but the maintenance costs are rather low) of ~ 10% / year for an apartment (the best housing properties to let around here). Since the prices have gone up (and they seem to keep on going up) the gross yields I can get are around 7%. So it would take 13.7 years to get back the investment if I were using only my money. and this is only the purchase price (without rehab costs - not great) and gross rent (without maintenance costs). So the real yield would be around 6% and around 15 years to return the investment (if using 100% my cash). I considered this unacceptable and refused to buy any more property; I looked into building some apartments (it is a bit difficult to accomplish) and even investing out of the country (this requires 100% our money (no leverage) and is less comfortable to manage). Recently I checked the yield rates for other countries in the EU and found that 6-7% is not so bad compared to other countries  (check this). I also looked into commercial but they are either risky (not 100% sure I can rent them in 2nd class areas) or super expensive and low yields (in prime areas like downtown).

I am interested in buying some more property now and could use your advice: should I buy now, with a 6-7% yearly yield ? Is this acceptable? (given that these are apartments and I can leverage them). Should I wait (I don't know if the prices will go down or keep going up), should I look somewhere else?

Your advice is highly appreciated.

Thank you!