Romanian Real Estate

This weekend I spent just over 36 hours in Bucharest.  I spent a further 10 hours on planes or in airports!

The trip, however, was well worth it.  I had two key aims: visit the school and meet my new colleagues, and go house hunting.  Both - I am now delighted to say - were accomplished successfully, and I left Bucharest on Saturday night with an enormous smile on my face.

I'll definitely be writing much more about Bucharest and the school in the future, but today we've had a big success in securing somewhere to live next year.  In fact we are going to take the house from the 15th July...just 6 weeks away!

I got up on Saturday morning and had breakfast in the hotel with FC Rapid, a Romanian Liga 2 team who are set for promotion to their top league next year.  So that was interesting.  Shortly after this, my new headteacher very generously came to the hotel to collect the two suitcases of things I had taken over and store them for us until we arrive.  He invited me to his house for a coffee, and I had a lovely hour with his family talking about all kinds of things before needing to head back to the hotel to meet the estate agent.

We visited four properties - all ones that we had seen online and put on our shortlist.  In a way, starting with the one that we already knew was our 'top choice' was always going to make everything else pale into insignificance, but it was great to visit it in person.  It's been on the market for a couple of months, and the price had dropped a bit, but it was still above our budget.  It's gorgeous, owned by Romanians who are in Australia for 4 years, and they have kids so they've child-proofed the place (sharp corners covered, etc.)  It's in a very quiet area, and the back looks over the forest with a direct path from the row of houses into the forest itself.


You can see where it is on the map below, which also marks the route to school.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/44.5171019,26.1220718/British+School,+Strada+Erou+Iancu+Nicolae+42,+Voluntari+077190,+Romania/@44.5149343,26.1209132,1698m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x40b202ae23900d5f:0xa50f734cbf6e3076!2m2!1d26.133684!2d44.514921!3e2




I also took a series of short videos as I went around the house to show to Alice.   The quality is terrible, but it gives you an idea.  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2UV4t4C4udSQW9hvsLgiN_uSUeiTIKhh

I could put up links to the other ones we looked at, but it's rather pointless.  We spent a long time discussing our options, but eventually decided to put in an offer about 20% below the asking price.  After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing by email from Cairo, the estate agent has confirmed that our offer has been accepted.  We're delighted.  I'm exhausted.  Goodnight!