Several real estate agencies of Timi oara bankrupted because of the lack of transactions

Four almost four months now, the real estate market of Timi oara has been frozen. Ever since the first half of 2008, realtors have seen their sales drop over the same period of 2007, with some developers now being willing to lower their prices. Many small realtors have stopped their operations ever since last year.

Crenguţa Radosav, the manager of a real estate company, stated that the number of deals has dropped so abruptly since June 2008 that she decided to close her company in November. She says: "the market was in deadlock even as far as one year before then. That"s when the number of buyers started shrinking, and many people who had lots of cash, had information that the market would tank, and prices would drop".

Crenguţa Radosav feels that it"s natural for the market to become saturated, as the prices were very high: "We had two room apartments sell for 60000 Euros, with the banks valuing them at 80000 Euros, just so they can give out more loans. In other words, there were many cases of overvaluation".

According to realtors in Timi oara, prices are in a downward trend. Right now, the average prices the owners are asking for are 40-45000 Euros for a studio, 50000 Euros for a one room flat, 60000 Euros for two-room apartments and 70000 Euros for three-room apartments. Prices for homes are stagnating, with prices ranging between 100000 euros for "core and shell works" and up to 300000 Euros for "turnkey" homes. These prices are still way above those of February 2007, Timi oara realtors claim.

Crenguţa Radosav added that right now, less than 600 two-room apartments are for sale, all of them being sold directly by the owners. Up to now, most ads came from realtors and were numbered in the thousands, (for instance, around 100 apartments would be listed even ten times by the various realtors).