Romanian Property News

If you want to look for the busiest traffic spot in Bucharest, with a flyover, lots of heavy traffic, crowded ring road, even a railroad, and queues stretching for miles, there’s one place to go: the Otopeni bridge. With a flyover that is part of the busiest road in Romania (DN1 – national road 1) going over the Bucharest ring road (which is – still – not a dual carriageway), Otopeni bridge is the nightmare to avoid when you are on your way to the Otopeni (a.k.a Henry Coanda) airport or trying to avoid central Bucharest by going East-West vie the ring road. Nevertheless, the area is next to the overcrowded posh-er Tunari and it’s likely to get decongested in the near future once the ring road moves another 10-15 miles further from Bucharest and all the heavy traffic goes there. Further, if there is any greenery left nearby Bucharest, quite a bit of it is around Baneasa and Otopeni (it used to be more, but, unfortunately, then the supermarkets showed up and cleared some of it). The only thing missing from the area are…a few blocks of flats. But not for long.

It is nearby the Otopeni bridge where a small project, including a total of 72 apartments, is currently being built. The project is actually named Otopeni Bridge, and is on the small side (the blocks are only two-story high), but indicates a slow change in the developments in the area. So far, we’ve seen plenty of villas and mansions being put together in Otopeni, Baneasa, and Tunari, but it looks like, as the space is running out, developers are moving to the next stage, providing blocks of flats to the market. It is yet to see whether the approach will be successful, as the prices are slightly spicy. In spite of the distance to Bucharest, as well as the slightly problematic area of Otopeni bridge, a 87.5sqm one-bedroom flat costs just over €109k while a two-bedroom flat will set you back €151k.


On the funny side, the details about the project are…slightly different – while Daily Business reports it as a four-block project, on a 5200 land plot in an online article, Premium Imobiliare, one of the estate agents promoting the project, claims it is only a two-block complex, stretching over 2000 sqm.

The project has the backing of the Romanian Bank of Commerce and is at the moment in the early stages, as the construction started back in September and it is due to be finished in two stages in 2008 and 2009.