In Constanța, an apartment listed for sale sits on the market for 78 days, on average, before finding a buyer. In Brașov, slightly less, 72. Bucharest, by contrast, is the only city that drops below the two-month mark, even though prices there run higher than the rest of the country on average. One possible explanation isn't about how much an apartment costs, but about how fast a Bucharest buyer can afford it. It isn't the only plausible factor, though, as we'll see below.

What the numbers actually show

The data comes from two sources that confirm each other. The National Bank of Romania's financial stability report, published in 2026, notes that in Bucharest, listings stay on the market for 54 days on average. Separately, Imobiliare.ro presented the same figure at the national Imobiliare.ro HUB 2026 conference. The average time from an apartment entering the market to being sold rose from 52 days, in the first quarter of 2025, to 54 days, in the same period of 2026. Practically a plateau, not a sudden acceleration, but enough to keep Bucharest at the top among major cities.

What doesn't explain the gap between cities

One obvious but misleading factor is the 2025 tax change. The standard VAT rate rose from 19% to 21%, and the reduced rate for first-home purchases was eliminated. The effect was a shift in demand from new apartments to older ones, felt nationally, not just in Bucharest. Buyer interest in older apartments in the capital grew by 26%, while interest in new ones dropped by 11%. It's a real phenomenon, but it doesn't explain why apartments in Bucharest sell faster than in Constanța or Brașov. The VAT change applied everywhere in the country, and the older-homes market moved faster than the new one nationally, not just in the capital.

A possible explanation: the price-to-income ratio

A plausible hypothesis, though one that leans more on interpretation than on directly confirmed data, is the difference in affordability. In Bucharest, a two-room apartment can be bought outright, without a loan, in 6.8 years of income. In Constanța, the same purchase takes 12 years. The difference doesn't come from lower prices in Constanța. The average price per square meter is actually somewhat lower there (2,000 euros per usable square meter, according to the Imobiliare.ro Index for May 2026) than the Bucharest average, which often runs above 2,200 euros. The affordability gap comes, then, almost entirely from salaries that run much higher in the capital. There's no public data, however, directly confirming that a buyer with more financial capacity decides faster. It's a reasonable logical link, not a fact explicitly documented by any source.

Which neighborhoods sell fastest

Public data doesn't offer an official ranking of sale speed by neighborhood. It does show clearly where buying demand is concentrated: Berceni and Militari, affordable areas in the south and west of the city, along with Pipera, in the north, where recent development has picked up noticeably. At the opposite end of the price scale, the most expensive areas remain Aviatorilor, at nearly 4,910 euros per usable square meter, Primăverii, at 4,583 euros, Kiseleff, at 4,491 euros, and Herăstrău, at 4,470 euros. The most affordable Bucharest neighborhood remains Ferentari, with prices just above 1,000 euros per square meter, below the Constanța average, though not representative of the city's overall price level. There's no public data on sale speed by individual neighborhood, so any link between these areas' popularity and the affordability explanation remains a hypothesis, not a direct confirmation.

Real demand, or just realistic starting prices?

The two explanations don't cancel each other out. They overlap. The central bank estimates that the residential real estate market is undervalued, both nationally and in Bucharest. Current prices would still sit below the level justified by household income, financing costs, and rent levels, regardless of the calculation method used. The bank itself cautions that this conclusion should be read carefully, since the estimates are sensitive to methodology. At the same time, the number of transactions dropped 16.6% in Bucharest in the first quarter of 2026, compared to the same period the year before. This doesn't look like a classic boom, with many buyers competing for few apartments. It's more a narrower pool of buyers, with enough income for a city where housing remains, proportionally, more affordable than in the rest of the country. Even if the sticker price, overall, says otherwise.

Also recommended How much apartments in Bucharest cost in May 2026. Prices, conditions, units for sale