Romanian Property News

Trident is the latest residential development currently taking shape in southern Bucharest, in the Berceni area. Trident is a medium-sized project, consisting of three ten-story high blocks, including 109 apartments. Most of the units are studio flats (82 out of 109 flats), which makes them very attractive from a financial perspective to potential buyers.

The area of Berceni is an interesting mixture: it starts with the Berceni market, which gathers all sorts of small stores and “mobile” stalls, then it continues with a few wide streets, surrounded by tall trees and (tall) blocks of flats, then it finishes with what used to be agricultural/industrial area and nowadays is slowly filling up with supermarkets, warehouses, and commercial/office buildings. Behind some of the tall blocks you can still find small patches of greenery and, strangely, very old houses, most of them in bad need of renovation. So, is Berceni a good choice? Probably 5-10 years ago the typical answer would have been “well, if you must…”. Currently however, with available land plots running out around in the north and escalating prices, the south of Bucharest becomes increasingly attractive for potential developers. As witnessed by other large investors, the price of land for real estate projects creeps beyond 50% of the total investment, making the location a crucial factor in determining the final cost of the apartments. After all this talk about cheaper prices, how much do the Trident flats actually cost?

The obvious cheapest alternatives in the Trident complex are the studio flats. Priced just over €2000/sqm (including VAT!), the studio flats are far from attractive; however being very small units, starting at only 35sqm, their total price opens up the inexistent segment of flats priced under €100k: the smallest units are available for sale for €62000+VAT. Yes, at only 35sqm is not exactly anybody’s idea of dream home, but with rents creeping well over €350/month, the owner could easily cover the mortgage costs and earn some money on top of it. As the Romanian credit market currently does not impose any additional taxes for buy-to-let investments, any purchased studio flats would actually take care of themselves and also bring a small profit.

The Trident residential project will be finalised in September 2009. However, it appears that a quarter of the flats have already been sold, so you might have to move quick if you’re after one of them…

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