Legislative proposal limits advance payments for real estate purchases to 10%

A group of PSD parliamentarians has introduced a legislative proposal aimed at capping advance payments for purchasing newly built properties from developers at 10%. Under this proposal, developers would be allowed to collect a higher down payment of up to 40%, provided they have a valid insurance policy. The advance payments would be deposited into a special account designated for the specific building project, with funds strictly allocated for development purposes.

This initiative emerges 14 years after two significant real estate scandals in Bucharest—the Planorama and Terra Residence cases—where hundreds of buyers lost both their advance payments and the promised apartments. The proposal is also a response to a recent investigation by Recorder, which highlighted practices by the developer Nordis, who was found selling apartments in their Mamaia project.

A similar initiative was proposed in 2019, seeking to regulate real estate transactions by limiting advance payments to 10% and requiring residential projects to be registered with ANL. However, this previous effort stalled in the legislative process in 2020.

The current proposal aims to provide greater protection for homebuyers and restore confidence in the Romanian real estate market.