Luxury, a domestic residential niche of up to 7000 euros per sqm

An obvious tendency at the level of Capital's residential market is the developers' orientation towards satisfying middle class exigencies and demands. A perfectly natural thing, given the fact that this category forms the majority of Bucharest's population.

Nevertheless, although smaller in the number of demands and, implicitly, offers, the luxury residential sector is also not to be neglected. All the more that, most of the times, it is exactly in this segment that the most spectacular changes occur at market level on a whole.

When we talk about luxury dwellings in the Capital, we have in view two fundamental elements, which are closely interrelationed: location and prices (which most often defy ordinary buyer's common sense). If, in terms of position, we evidently refer to the most acknowledged locations - the Centre and the North -, as regards prices the perspective is somewhat more flexible. Thus, as EuroMetropola consultants showed us, the price of a dwelling that really falls into the luxury category starts from 3000 euros/sq.m. and may reach about 7000 euros/sq.m.

"We may widen the spectre of luxury dwellings, so we may also include those dwellings whose price starts from 2000 euros/sq.m., but which do not have all the luxury characteristics - in this situation we may talk about luxury for the middle class", the company representatives added. Exemplifying, they detailed for us the price ranges in several top areas of Bucharest: 4000-7000 euros/sq.m. in Primaverii, 2800-5000 euros/sq.m. in Herastrau, 2500 euros/sq.m. in Victoriei. High prices are not only a distinctive element, but also a strongly restrictive one of luxury dwelling accessibility.

This explains why most potential buyers of such dwellings are foreign investors or employees of multinationals, assigned to Romania, as Anda Marian, Manager Multi-Family & International Sales at Coldwell Banker Affiliates of Romania told us. She pointed out that, although the demand for luxury dwellings had increased over the past recent years, as potential customers had more options and became more selective, the offer amounted to only about 15% of the total residential offers. In his turn, Razvan Teodorescu, Manager within the residential sales department, at Regatta, estimates that the demand of luxury dwellings reaches a maximum of 20% of the total.

Curierul National