Despite a recent price explosion that took property prices in Romania up to 2008 levels (and even above), you can still find dirt-cheap village houses for as low as a few thousand Euros.
I know, because we bought one years ago – and if you think it’s too good to be true, it might be! Today, I’m here to tell you everything that happened after I bought a house in Romania for €5,000 and why it might be better to stay away from these properties.
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Here’s the house we bought for 5,000 Euros
We bought this house in 2012, located in a village that was just 35 kilometers (22 miles) away from our city – so very close.
It seemed like the best possible deal – the house looked in a good condition overall, and the ad looked even better:
- Two small rooms and a hallway – perfect for our family of three (and mostly weekend getaways)
- A bathroom and kitchen with running water – still a rarity in many Romanian villages.
- Updated electrical wiring and various improvements
- A basement, spacious attic, open barn, and two small storage rooms.
- A modest front yard and a larger backyard suitable for gardening.
Even back then, this sounded like an amazing deal, the “once in a lifetime” opportunity. You can still buy very cheap houses in Romania, but there are things you should consider.
Here’s what it looked like:
Doesn’t really look like a dream house, right? Well, we are always able to see the potential, as we did when we bought our Romanian apartment and managed to turn it into our dream home.
But all in all, things seemed OK overall. There was a bit of work to be done, but nothing too bad.
Well… we were WRONG!
Looking back at our “too good to be true” deal, it wasn’t exactly that.
The running water? It was just a pipe coming up to the yard. Yes, there was a kitchen and bathroom – both fully equipped – but neither was connected to any plumbing. In other words, a huge expense for us (and a ton of work too).
The bathroom? Yes, there was a room, properly equipped with a toilet, sink and a nice looking bathtub. But apart from the fact that there was no running water, there was no sewage either. Again, more headaches and even more costs to make it work.
Renovations? Indeed, some were done – like replacing the floors. The problem? When the previous workers did so, the floor was too high now for the doors to be re-installed. So we had to buy new doors.
Apart from that, as you can see in the photos above, the entire property needed a lot of TLC. Including roof repairs, as we later found out that there were some leaks there, too.
In other words, the property was sold for €5,000 for a reason: you had to invest a lot to make it livable. I think that, back then, we could’ve turned it into a decent place to be in for around €30,000 more.
We started working on it for a bit (read about our experience here)… but it was too much.
Buying a cheap village house in Romania is risky
When we bought this house, both my wife and I were young and inexperienced. I had a dream of having this idyllic house in a village, being able to enjoy the silence over the weekend and relaxing… but no real life knowledge when it came to being able to spot problems.
Apart from the problems mentioned above, others popped up, like finding out that our house was providing accommodation to a large clan of rats.
Even more annoying was our neighbor whose cars you can see in the photos above.
He was used to grow his animals and crops there (because nobody had lived in the place for years), as well as deposit all his crap, and whenever we told him to take everything away, he just shrugged telling us he has no place to store them. It was nerve-wracking.
Plus, there are plenty of other problems when it comes to village life and I encourage you to check my article out when you’re done reading this one, as those problems alone can be a deal breaker for many.
The main lesson about living in a Romanian village is that if an offer seems too good to be true, there is a catch, most likely.
Close inspection of everything (from promised amenities to neighbors) is essential. Otherwise, you might run into plenty of unpleasant surprises.
It’s not always bad, fortunately. We had a reader share their amazing experience living in a Transylvanian village, and there are great choices in Romania, even today when you can find dirt-cheap properties in various villages.
Just be prepared and careful with what you buy and make sure you’re ready for all the challenges. Or at least for those you can anticipate, because there will always be more challenges than you expect.
You can still buy a great cheap house in a Romanian village!
While our initial purchase was definitely a failure, we did not quit our dream of having a (functional) village house where we can relax every now and then.
Now, with more experience under our belts, we purchased a house in a different village. It’s closer to home, but most importantly, the house was move-in ready, had running water, centralized heating, sewers and everything else that we needed.
I wrote in depth about our new, dream village house in Romania (which still needed some love and care, but where we lived for months already).
How much did it cost us? 30,000 Euros. We fortunately managed to sell the first house (for a small profit, at 5,500 Euros!) to make things better. Still affordable for a house – especially since, as soon as we bought it in June, we moved there and spent the next three months there. It was amazing!
The main rule here is that you can’t expect to pay nothing and get a ton in return, even in Romania.
While getting a 5k fixer-upper and investing 30k to really make it yours, and exactly as you want it might be better for the long term, as you do end up with a house that’s exactly as you wanted, we simply didn’t have the time for that.
(And I still decided to make some renovations and changes – but that’s another story).
There are so many beautiful things about village life, things that I don’t get here in the city: the air is incredibly clean, the silence is amazing and you have nature all around you.
Birds chirping all the time, everything is extremely slow paced there, nobody is in a hurry and you feel a lot more relaxed.
Unless you’re really unlucky (as we were with the first village house we bought), your neighbors will be great, they will come over and help you with different chores, bring you all sorts of home-grown goodies (make sure to reciprocate – for many, a bottle of cooking oil, some flour and sugar can mean a lot!) and you will build true relationships.
Plus, it gives one a chance to grow their own vegetables and fruit and work for a healthy harvest at the end of the summer – something that does require a lot of work, but is also very rewarding.
Bottom line
If you’re planning to “follow the dream” and get a house in a village in Romania, make sure to double check everything and NEVER trust what the seller is promising.
Test the water to see if it’s running, inspect anything and everything, make a list before you get there and talk to some neighbors too – maybe even take a trip to the city hall and learn more about the property itself.
There are many things that us, city folks, won’t even know to look out for. So always be prepared for challenges and problems.
But if this REALLY is your dream, it can definitely become reality – even more so in Romania, where property prices are still cheap. I wrote about the best places to search for property in Romania here – make sure to give them a spin.
And after you do, after you’re past the challenges and unexpected twists, after the dust settles and you finally sit down on an old wooden chair on your house’s porch, taking it all in… then you will be truly happy.
Having lived in Romania for over 4 decades, I am here to tell you everything about this beautiful country. I hold a bachelor’s degree in Journalism, I love traveling and I’ve been writing about Romania since 2013. Currently living in Constanta.
Hi there.
You think i could live in a village like that one for around 500euros a month?
Rent, food and all the other basic things.
Thanks
I don’t really think it is possible, Mario. First and most important, nobody rents houses in villages (there is no demand and no offers) so you would have to buy. You could find something for around 10,000 Euros that is semi-decent and in this case it might be doable on 500 Euros per month, especially if you plan to grow your own vegetables and livestock. But if you’d have to pay health insurance, for example, that would cut your budget a lot. You would also need a car because there are just very small shops (usually overpriced) in villages, so you would not be able to have access to things that have to be refrigerated and such.
Bottom line, I don’t think it is doable unless you are going to try to go for a very basic, strict and self-sustaining type of living.
Interesting article. I actually did Romanian village life many years ago one summer. I am from the US so it was quite an adjustment as we stayed in a home with no running water and an outhouse in the yard (hole in ground). We had to walk to the village well to get water daily. Every evening at around 5pm, there was a traffic jam on the dirt streets, a traffic jam of cows literally coming home to their respective houses. The stench of outhouses and animals is a smell I still remember. Yet the warmth and love of the generous souls I met while there is something I’ll carry with me always. They gifted me with handmade lace doilies and other things to remember them by. I would have remembered them for a lifetime irregardless of the gifts. These people were truly precious and I’m grateful for my summer in a Romanian village.
Happy to hear that, despite the negatives, you left with good memories. The smell from outhouses is indeed terrible (especially during the summer) but fortunately more and more people have a regular toilet nowadays. But still a lot of improvement to be made here.
It was interesting to read your opinion on the village house buying process in Romania. Are you still at your 30,000€ house? Was the house next to it sold? I was once involved in a village house purchase where I translated for a German buyer. Everything went well until after the transaction. Then a dispute came up as to who was supposed to pay the sales tax on the sale. The seller wanted us to pay it but the buyer said no. It made for some awkward moments as the seller moved out and the buyer moved in. The German buyer installed an electric pump to remove water that was accumulating in the basement. It was promptly stolen while he was away in Germany.
Hello Stuart,
Yes, we still have the “new” village house and the same neighbors. They did some minor repairs to their house (previously destroyed by a fire) but their situation is very complex at the moment.
Stealing is indeed one of the biggest potential problems in Romanian villages, which is now a bit easier to prevent by installing video cameras (but these come with extra costs and still won’t offer 100% safety).