Real Estate market between 1998-2008
The fact that my work is concentrated on the appraisal activity, allows me to make an analysis and a parallel between what the beginning of the real estate market in the big cities in Romania 10 years ago meant and the nowadays realities.
If during the period 1990-1994 the incipient real estate market was concentrated on the transactions between the ones who were massively put in possession of condominium through the legal decrees of the year 1990 (when the acquisition of any flats was made for a few hundreds dollars), after the inflation, the economic crisis and the accelerated depreciation of the currency from the middle of the ‘90s, the value of all these transactions has changed dramatically.
In the years 1998 and 1999 the value of, let’s say, a standard flat with 2 rooms (50-60sqm) was estimated at approximately 8,000-10,000 dollars (150-200 dollars/sqm).
At that moment I estimated that the market value of these flats represented 30-40% from the depreciated replacement cost (DRC), therefore it was very unprofitable to build residential real estate proprieties; this aspect was also confirmed by the fact that at that time, the real estate development projects were inexistent.
The stability and great economical development which appeared after the year 2000, the significant inflation reduction, the constant decrease of interest and the substantial improvement of the financing conditions lead to a 10 times over increased value of these flats, to approximately 80,000-100,000 Euro at the beginning of 2008 (1500-2000 Euro/sqm).
The spectacular increase of these values did not take into consideration the technical condition and the location of these buildings, but only the financing conditions and the rise of the population incomes.
Thus, the market value of a flat has become 200-300 percent higher than the DRC and the profit of the developers has also arisen at over 200 percent.
This analysis is only informative and does not take into consideration the effect generated by inflation (Euro-Dollar) and by the value of the land. Lately, land has had a very speculative value and was also affected by the insufficiency available plots for real estate development and lack of infrastructure.
An important conclusion is the fact that the most significant mark on the evolution of the real estate residential market was put by first the financing conditions and then by the significant increase of the purchasing power and less by the edification cost.
If the DRC has doubled in the mentioned period of time, the value of the real estate property increased up to 10 times.
Nowadays, when we are at the beginning of a potential real estate crisis whose proportions are difficult to appreciate and we must expect that harder financing conditions will have the same influence on the value of the flats, but in the other sense.
Even if this correction will not be so emphasized, it will be still significant, all these aspects being in correlation with the turbulences on the loan market.
Adrian Crivii, FRICS, MAA
