I just found a newly built 7 bedroom villa with pool in Bucharest for under €500k, not ideal as it's near the airport but if anyone could point to an equivalent in the Manchester metropolitan area I'd be very interested.

Also found an entire building on Bucharest's second busiest street Magheru Blvd for €1.4M. Out of my price range unfortunately but it does include 12 separate 3 bedroom apartments, a floor of offices, and a restaurant, cafe and art gallery at street level.

> Also found an entire building on Bucharest's second busiest street Magheru Blvd for €1.4M. Out of my price range unfortunately but it does include 12 separate 3 bedroom apartments, a floor of offices, and a restaurant, cafe and art gallery at street level.

This sounds extremely dubious and I would not take that into account in any relevant real estate price for central Bucharest :)

Yeah there’s the occasional news piece in the uk showing some random person buying “homes” in Romania or Bulgaria for 5k£. People fail to distinguish fact from fantasy, and imagine outliers are the norm. No mentioning of the properties being better of demolished and rebuilt or in the middle of nowhere. There’s a lot of anti east european propaganda in western europe, likely a remnant of the cold war era. Keeps the consumer types happy and grateful for being born in a “rich” country.

I would agree to propaganda, but I also agree that the quoted price for a studio is correct. It can also be less on the outskirts and not in a central area. A very central 2 bedrooms, living room, two baths can be rented at 600 EUR in Bucharest. If you still don’t believe it I can show you the rental contract.

Why go that big? Most people are already happy with 2 rooms and 60 square metres. Those apartments are much cheaper than $500k, at least in Budapest, which is a country away, but still :) Ok, I get it, a big family would be very happy in that villa, bit it's a bit weird to see it as a baseline :)

Indeed, it was just the first one that came up in the search to illustrate the massive difference.

It's about twice the house you'd get for Manchester money. Maybe there's other factors to consider, but the idea that Romanian housing is the same price as the UK's doesn't make much sense to me, and I can't find evidence of it being true.

Did you try other cities in Romania? For example Braila - a very beautiful city on the Danube, with old exquisite arhitecture, where old grand villas are for a steal?