Uncensored guide about Real Estate in Romania.

                   4 crucial ideas.                  

                 Timisoara will be the European Capital of Culture in 2021. Considering this, its economic power and also because of its proximity to the West Europe it will be the case study. There will be a future human avalanche, everyone attracted by the quality of life in Timisoara. One can easy notice on its streets the effervescence of life. It is called also The City of Flowers or Small Vienna.

                 There are lots of factories, building sites, booming commerce and last but not the least, social life. Definitely you will not be bored: Opera, Philharmonic, 3 languages theatres, sport arenas, good restaurants and pubs, night clubs and modern music concerts are present all over the place. Let’s not forget that the official number of Timisoara’s inhabitants is 315.000. On top of this you can add a lot more: tourists; persons in transit; people without official residence forms.

                 The city is very well connected to the world: in 2018 arrived the highway to its doors which is linking Timisoara with main cities from the continent and brought XXI century modern transport in Romania. Timisoara Airport is the most important in West Romania. Year after year the team working there is breaking records after records (according to Romanian standards): number of passengers, luggage weight, modern techniques, environmental behaviour, and new routes opened. This is the main gate where you want to arrive. As airlines flying in and from Timisoara I mention Tarom, Wizzair, Lufthansa and Ryanair.

                 Economically speaking, Timisoara is the engine of West Romania. The unemployment rate is almost 0%. I can say that is negative: many entrepreneurs that I personally know cannot find employees for their specific activities. If you have a glance on job offers sites you will see the huge amount of them! In Timisoara are located many automotive factories, Continental tire factory with their research centers, P&G factory and among these titans, high tech industry: soft developer companies, communication companies and so on.

                 All of these economic players are creating a large amount of jobs. For this reason, in the last years were generated a natural migration to Timisoara from not so developed regions from Romania. Together with increasing tourism attracted by the good services offered by local businesses, this flood of people caused a raise of housing prices: rentals are pretty high and acquiring a home is not cheap either. This high demand of housing is putting pressure on house lords and on developers.

                The last ones are forced to build faster than the concrete gets hard, so high is the demand. One can imagine the results reflected in quality: cheap materials used to build, cheap materials used in interior finishes, cheap architecture. All of these happen because they know that anyhow they will sell the units. I can add on top of these major infrastructure problems that an inexpert eye cannot see: crooked and cracked walls, the connection to public utilities, quality of doors, windows, sanitary ware, electric and heating installation. 'In the predators world, sheep are welcome'!

                I personally visit almost every day the building sites. There are dozens of developers in Timisoara but I am working only with those that prove during the years that they don’t save money in safety and quality. In the next chapter you will find some tips...

               1. How to find a place to live

                How to find a rent!

                To find a decent rent in Timisoara is not a piece of cake as many are thinking. Generally, the estate agencies announce rentals with fake photos or prices, just to ‘grab’ you. On the other hand, if you can get directly an owner, they consider and they promote their properties as if they are some sort of 5 stars hotel. But they are exactly the opposite! In this case, you should ask from the first contact if the photos are real. If you finally get to see the property, ask them to present to you an I.D. card and a document that prove that they are the real owners. Some of them are asking more than 3 months in advance. Be very careful with this! The reason why I’m underscoring this is that at the very beginning of my career in real estate I fell into this mistake...

                Another advice that I am giving you: make sure that the property in that you are interested is situated in the same location that results from advertising. Check out the proximity to public transportation too. Timisoara has its public transport network very well distributed and the transport means are quite punctual. You don’t want to lose this facility!

               Also I strongly recommend that you check out that all the bills are paid: electricity, Cable Company, house expenses, the natural gas bill. Also check out if everything is working properly: the fridge, the TV set, switches, water taps, the washing machine and generally all the appliances. If everything seems OK and you are satisfied with the new home, congratulations!

             In the last few years I personally am dealing rentals only if I have the full access and exclusively of the estate. Doing so, I can guarantee that the photos are real (they are not professional taken and I am asking for apologizes for this) and you spare time with this. Also, I can certify that the property is without any debts and is available for renting. By representing the owner, I do check that all documents are up to date. Here you can find some of our offers. If the offers presented on the website doesn't fit your requests, just let me know what your preferences are: our database has more rentals.

             There are plenty of offers on airbnb or other lodging websites: watch carefully the reviews of previous guests in the location that you want to stay. You should evaluate all positive and negative aspects and just after this take a decision.

             How to buy a property!

             If finding a rent is difficult, imagine what happens when you intend to acquire a house or an apartment! First of all, I would like to tell you that in Timisoara’s real estate market are a few hundreds of registered agencies and apart of them, many other unregistered players: anyone who knows that a granny or a neighbor is selling his property became a ‘pro’!

             Those ‘pros’, without having the minimum amount of know how, are doing a lot of wrong things. This things are negatively reflecting on the serious agencies. In order to cash the commission, they do not present all aspects and qualities of the property, they don’t present the updated documentation situation, they make things more complicated than they are, and last, but not least, usually they are the intermediary of an intermediary of an intermediary!  

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