Monday, 25 August 2025
A theme raised consistently during the “Office Market Challenges and Opportunities” panel held at CEDER 2025 was the fact that the office market in Romania is facing significant regulatory challenges and uncertainty.
As Florian Nițu, Managing Partner of Popovici, Nițu, Stoica & Asociații, observed, “the high stakes are today […] in the various forces that are pushing toward deregulation, on one side, and overregulation on the other”. This tension is particularly evident in Bucharest, where the market is experiencing “a de facto construction ban, or, to put it mildly, very restrictive framework”.
A major source of uncertainty stems from the status of urban planning documents. Ioana Roman, Partner & Head of Real Estate at Filip & Company, pointed out the long-standing issue “with the ban on construction and the situation that we have with the annulment of the zonal plans”. While acknowledging a recent court decision that “reversed the annulment of the Sector 2 PUZ”, she questioned whether developers will “take the risk […] to obtain building permits and start development in this basically unpredictable scenario”.
The General Urbanism Plan (PUG) for Bucharest also remains problematic. Despite fundamental studies being finalised, Ioana Roman estimated that “we are looking at another two years at least for this to be actually approved”. Adinel Tudor, CEO of EVO Properties, was less optimistic, stating, “Most probably it will not […] be approved in the next two-three years”. He warned that “without a very clear plan for development of the city and with too much regulation, Bucharest is going to suffocate”.
Antoniu Panait, Managing Director of Vastint Romania, also noted that, by “having blocked the city from [a] development perspective […], Bucharest becomes non-competitive with other cities”.
Ioana Roman mentioned another complicating factor: “for the past […] almost two years now, we have an Urbanism Code in public debates. […] We want a simplified, streamlined process of permitting, we want predictability, we want flexibility”, but “the question remains whether our legislators will be able to find the correct balance between their interests and what concerns the private sector”. She also highlighted a practical challenge: the initial draft’s “very short transitionary period”, too short to implement the necessary changes.
The regulatory landscape is also evolving the relationship between private developers and the public sector.
Florian Nițu pointed to a “more obvious [and] pervasive interface, between the private and the public sector”, where regulators are “adding public interest elements into the regulation process”. This transforms the relationship into something “more complex and not only unilateral, but bilateral and constant”. Consequently, “an office project in itself must generate social value, must serve a public purpose”.
Panellists agreed that the market requires greater stability. Adinel Tudor noted that for investment, only three requirements exist: “returns, predictability and safety”, and currently, Bucharest “is only ticking one, maybe two of those”. He expressed a desire for “a political environment that would simply let businesses do their jobs”.
Andreea Cotiga, Head of Leasing Office at CPI Property Group Romania concluded: “we in the business environment […] would need a little bit more stability coming from the political sector, […] because otherwise these many opportunities that are there in the market will just transform in speculations”. The prevailing feeling among developers, as expressed by Antoniu Panait, was being “affected by the unforeseen things that are popping up each time”, making predictability paramount for future growth.
