The law gives you the questions. The answers you have to ask the developer for, and write into the contract.
Six lines, handwritten, on a sheet folded into four.
Gil took it out of his jacket pocket in a café in Cluj, half an hour before the meeting with the developer, and spread it on the table. “I went over it again on the flight,” he said. “I'm still not sure I understand the fifth line.”
We had written the sheet together two weeks earlier, in a Zoom call that began with an entirely different question. Gil asked whether it is now safe, after the Nordis law, to buy an apartment off plan in Romania. I answered that the law doesn't answer that question. But it does answer another, no less important one: what exactly to ask.
Gil's daughter studies medicine in Cluj, third year out of six. For three years he has been paying rent, and every summer another increase arrives. His calculation was simple: a two-room apartment near the university, where his daughter would live until the end of her studies, and afterward it would be rented to the next student. A new project, ten minutes' walk from campus, delivery planned for summer 2028.
The law, which came into force on 11 December 2025, amended the Romanian construction quality law and the property law. Every line on Gil's sheet was born from one provision in it.
The first line: is the building permit registered in the land registry books? Without that, a preliminary agreement for a future apartment cannot be signed. The agreement itself is signed only before a notary, who files it for registration the same day or the next working day. The law is meant to close the possibility of selling the same apartment twice.
The second line: into which account do the advance payments go? Under the law, into a separate bank account designated only for this project. The third: who approves payments out of it? The site inspector. Without his approval the money does not go out.
The fourth line: how much do you pay on reservation? The law limits the reservation fee to 5% of the price, for a period of up to sixty days.
The fifth line, the one Gil wasn't sure about: what happens to the money beyond the caps? The law permits withdrawing from the account up to 25% of the price for the structural frame, and once the frame is finished a further up to 20% for the systems. On what lies beyond that, and the question of when exactly the developer may touch it, the law is almost silent. “So what do you do with silence?” Gil asked on Zoom. You write it into the contract.
The sixth line doesn't come from the law at all: what happens if handover is late? In Romania, when the date for signing the final agreement passes without an extension agreed upon, the buyer is entitled to demand compensation from the developer. It is worth having the sum written in advance, and not left to argument later.
The meeting itself went better than Gil expected. The developer, a local who had already built several projects in the city, went through the list without getting flustered. He showed a registry extract with the permit registered. He gave the details of the project's account and the name of the inspector. On the fifth line he himself offered wording: the money beyond the caps stays in the account until the occupancy permit. “You're the first buyer who has asked me about that,” he told Gil. “Most people only ask about the floor.”
Then came the reservation form.
The marketer sent it that same evening. A reservation fee of 10%, and a reservation period of ninety days. Gil photographed it and sent it to me with a single question mark.
It wasn't a trick. It was a pre-law form that had stayed on the marketer's computer. But a form like that is not a technical matter. A reservation that exceeds the cap is exposed to the claim that it is void, and someone who signed it in good faith may find himself arguing over his money rather than over the apartment.
I wrote to the developer. The reply came the next day, with an apology and a corrected form: 5%, sixty days.
Only that in the meantime almost two weeks had passed. And the apartment Gil wanted, on the fourth floor with the balcony facing the hill, had been sold to someone who signed the old form without asking anything.
Gil took the apartment below it. The same layout, without the view.
“He got the balcony,” Gil wrote to me after signing at the notary. “I got a contract I understand.”
I think sometimes about that other buyer. Chances are everything will work out for him. The developer is serious, the form has already been corrected, the project is moving forward. But he signed a document that did not comply with the law, and he has no idea.
Most investors who come to me ask whether the new law protects them. That is a yes-or-no question, and this law doesn't work that way. It promises nothing on its own. It gives you a list. Whoever arrives at the meeting with the list quickly discovers which developer knows how to answer, and where the law itself leaves an empty space that has to be filled in the contract.
The question I would ask in your place
- Is the building permit registered in the land registry books, and did I see it with my own eyes and not only hear about it?
- Into which account am I transferring the money, and who approves every payment that leaves it?
- What does my contract say about the money the law says nothing about?
Stories are based on real situations, with identifying details changed. Not legal advice.
Translated from the Hebrew original. עברית