Three out five Romanians spent at most three months searching for the property they currently own, according to an ING survey on the home buying experience quoted by Economica.net.

More than 60% of the Romanians surveyed said they found their home after looking at most five properties, while another 22.8% purchased their home after viewing in between six and ten properties.

Romania takes up the third spot in a ranking of owners with no mortgage loans (46.5%), after Poland (54.1%) and Italy (49.3%). Romanians are also last in Europe when it comes to purchasing a home using a mortgage loan (14.9%), the survey showed.

Only 11.5% of Romanians rent a property, compared to 53.5% of Germans or 48.4% of Austrians, while one in four Romanians said they lived with friends or family, a share above the European average. The Germans (4.1%) and the French (5.9%) are at the opposite end in this respect.

When having to choose between their dream home and the one they can afford, more than half of the Romanians surveyed put the price criteria first. A total of 58.3% of Romanians offered precisely the price demanded by the seller, and only 24.8% negotiated the price to get a better offer.

Furthermore, 57.2% of the Romanian respondents purchased a home because they wanted to be owners in the area they live in. Only 5.7% looked at the acquisition as an investment – the lowest share in Europe, where Luxembourg citizens (25%), the French (21.4%), and the Germans (19.6%) take up the first spots.

When it came to financial support, Romanians turned mostly to their families (44.7%), the banking consultant (22.1%), or friends (18.1%).

Almost half (47.4%) of the Romanians surveyed are considering moving or purchasing a home in the next two years, although three out of five think the prices will go up and that, since 2015 until now, it has become increasingly difficult for those just starting out to purchase a home.

The criteria taken into account by those who plan to purchase of home include a quiet and safe environment, the design and the efficient energy consumption, the generous surface, a garden, and the proximity to stores or hospitals.

At the same time, 44% of the Romanians surveyed said their revenues went down since the start of the pandemic, at the top of the European countries surveyed. At the opposite end, only 17.2% of the Dutch and 17.3% of Luxembourg citizens said their income was impacted during this period. Furthermore, 65.9% of Romanians said they cut back on non-essential expenses.

The ING survey on home buying was carried out by Ipsos through online questionnaires. The survey was carried out in September 2020 in 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Turkey, UK, and the US.

simona@romania-insider.com

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