Purchasing property in Romania is not hard – there can be a fair bit of bureaucracy to get through, and red tape can frustrate, but the process is still relatively straight forward. First and foremost, a local lawyer with a good reputation should be hired – this is not a requirement of the purchase process, it is simply to make things a lot easier and safer. Fluency in English is quite common with Romanian professionals, so finding a bilingual lawyer should not prove too difficult. All documentation relating to property ownership or reclamation should be thoroughly checked by a number of independent parties to be sure it is above-board.

Once a property is decided upon, the buyer and seller may sign a pre-contract, as well as the deposit being paid – usually around 10 percent of the total purchase price. The required legal documents are then notarised and sent to the local Land Registry, where the property is registered in the name of the buyer in the land book. Once this process is complete, the remainder of the fee can be paid to the buyer.

A few taxes are paid on completion of the sale of varying amounts – though not much, as well as the fees to the notaries and lawyers, which are usually around five percent of the total purchase cost. Foreign buyers are party to the same laws as Romanian nationals in regards to property ownership, but laws for land ownership vary through the country – these are set to change when the country attains EU membership around 2007, meaning foreigners will have equal land-owning rights.