When a Project in Bucharest Taught Me That Real Estate in Europe Isn’t Real Estate in Israel

It was a Wednesday afternoon when WhatsApp beeped. A message from Amir, an Israeli real-estate developer we had supported on his way into the Romanian market. “I’m in trouble. Big trouble. We need to talk now.”

As a lawyer who supports developers and investors in international real estate, I already know that when “now” arrives in a WhatsApp message, things aren’t simple. Eight months earlier, Amir had bought an old building in central Bucharest, the capital of Romania. The plan was simple: renovate, divide it into apartments, and rent them to local tenants and expats.

“The city hall has stopped my works,” he said on the video call. “They say I can’t change the layout of the apartments without approval from a heritage committee. What heritage committee? This building was built in 1987!”

Amir is a type I know well. 52 years old, he has built more than 200 housing units in Israel. He succeeded, made good money, and decided to expand into Europe. “Why Romania?” I asked him at our first meeting almost a year earlier. “Bucharest is an opportunity,” he explained. “Low prices, high demand, and lots of Israelis are already making money there. I’ve seen the numbers, it makes sense.”

I warned him back then. “Amir,” I said, “real estate in Europe isn’t real estate in Israel. Every country is a different world. There’s different regulation, a different work culture, and laws you don’t know.”

He smiled that typical smile. “What could possibly be so different? I know real estate. I bought right, I have a healthy margin, and I have a good local contractor. I’m covered.”

The first crack

Amir’s problem began long before the heritage committee. It began when he stood with the Romanian contractor and tried to explain how he wanted the renovation done.

“I want to open up this wall,” Amir said, pointing to a wall between two small apartments. “We’ll make one big apartment out of them, more attractive to the market.”

The contractor looked at him, nodded and said “Da, da” (yes, yes in Romanian). Amir thought everything was fine.

Two weeks later, when Amir paid a surprise visit to the site, he discovered that the contractor not only hadn’t opened up the wall – he had stopped all work on that floor. “Why?” Amir asked in frustration.

“It needs approval,” the contractor explained calmly. “This change has to be approved.”

“What approval? I’m the owner!”

The contractor took out a long document in Romanian and showed it to him. It turns out that in buildings built in the communist era (before 1989), even if they aren’t listed as historic buildings, there are restrictions on structural changes. You need approval from the city hall, which in turn refers you to a special committee that checks whether the change is “consistent with the character of the original building”.

The process? Four to six months. Minimum.

“Four months?!” Amir almost shouted. “In four months I lose the whole season!”

Yes – but in Romania, and in Europe in general, bureaucracy is queen.

The tenants who spoke English (almost)

But the story didn’t end there. Even supposing Amir managed to get all the approvals (and in the end he did, after seven months), he faced a completely different challenge: the tenants.

The first apartment was rented to a young local couple. Everything looked great. They signed the contract, paid a deposit and moved in. A month later, they called to say the air conditioner wasn’t working.

Amir called a technician, who came and said the air conditioner was working perfectly. The problem? The tenants didn’t know how to operate it. It was a new unit with a smart remote, and the instructions were only in English.

“Why didn’t they read the instructions?” Amir asked in frustration.

“Because in Romania,” I explained to him, “not everyone reads fluent English. And if you rent to locals, you have to provide instructions for use in Romanian. That isn’t a request; it’s an obligation under consumer protection law.”

But that was only the beginning. When winter came, the tenants complained that the apartment was cold. It turns out that in old buildings in Romania, the city’s central heating system runs on a set schedule, and it doesn’t always provide enough heat. Amir didn’t know that when he bought the building.

“So what do we do?” he asked.

“You install electric radiators or a supplementary heating system. And you pay out of your own pocket.”

The moment everything changed

A year later, when Amir sat across from me in the office, he looked different. More tired, but also wiser.

“Listen,” he said, “there’s one thing nobody told me before I went into Romania – or, to be honest, into any foreign market.”

“What?” I asked.

“That the Israeli attitude of ‘what could go wrong in real estate? It always goes up, more or less’ just isn’t true abroad. In Israel, you make a mistake, you lose a bit of time, a bit of money, but in the end you come out with a profit. The market always goes up; there’s always someone who’ll buy.”

He paused and sipped his coffee.

“But in Romania? In Bulgaria? In Greece? Anywhere abroad, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can lose everything. The capital, the time, and your faith in yourself. I’ve seen Israeli developers go into Portugal or Cyprus with millions and come out in debt. This isn’t a game.”

The questions nobody asks

So what have I learned from Amir and from dozens of other clients I’ve supported in European markets? That before you jump into Romania, Greece, Portugal or any other market abroad, there are questions you must ask yourselves:

Do you really want to handle this yourselves, or is it a “side deal”?

Because if it’s a side deal, forget it. Real estate abroad demands daily involvement. It isn’t something you can do remotely without a professional local team. And even with a team, you need to be there, at least at the beginning.

How involved are you going to be when something goes wrong?

Because something always goes wrong. Always. A contractor who doesn’t show up, a tenant who stops paying, regulation that changes overnight. The question is: can you fly to Bucharest, Athens or Lisbon at three days’ notice? Because sometimes there’s no choice.

Do you have local partners you genuinely trust?

Not someone recommended to you in some Facebook group. Someone you’ve checked, met and worked with long enough to know they’re reliable. In Romania, in Bulgaria, in Greece – without a good local partner, you’re blind.

Do you understand the local culture?

It isn’t only language. It’s how contractors work, how negotiations are conducted, what “yes” means (because sometimes it isn’t really yes), and how government systems operate. In Greece, for example, the bureaucracy is legendary. In Portugal, any change to a historic building requires approvals that take years.

And what happens if everything goes wrong?

That’s the question nobody asks, but it’s the most important one. Do you have a financial cushion? Are you prepared to take a loss? Because unlike in Israel, abroad there’s no guarantee you’ll manage to sell, that the market will go up, or that you’ll even get your investment back.

The end (which is a beginning)

And Amir today? He’s still in Romania. The first project took him two years instead of nine months, and cost twice what he had planned. But he learned. Today he has a Romanian partner and a maintenance man who lives in the building.

“I know Israeli real estate,” he told me recently, “but in Romania, and probably anywhere abroad, I’ll always be a student.”

And that is exactly the right approach to international real-estate development. Not “what could possibly happen”, but “what don’t I know yet, and how do I learn it before I invest?”

Because in the end, the difference between a developer who succeeds abroad and one who loses everything isn’t capital, isn’t experience, and isn’t even luck.

It’s the willingness to admit you don’t know, and to learn from the beginning.