The Phone Rang at Midnight

It wasn’t a call I was expecting.

An unknown number. 22:47. Usually I don’t answer.

But something made me pick up.

“Tell me,” said the voice on the other end, “does it make sense that the developer is selling the same apartment for 149 thousand when I paid 165 thousand – plus another 12 for furniture?”

I was silent for a second.

Not because I didn’t understand the question. Because I understood it too well.

Eyal isn’t a beginner investor. He has done deals. He knows numbers. He isn’t the type to jump at a glossy presentation without asking questions.

And yet there he was, sitting at his computer just before midnight, looking at the Romanian developer’s website and trying to understand how this had happened.

The story is familiar to anyone in the field: a new project in Bucharest. An impressive lobby. Polished renderings. Target audience: students and tech workers. A local management company that handles everything, from the tenant to the dripping tap. “A truly passive investment,” he was promised.

The Israeli marketer was charismatic, professional, and had an answer to every question. The furniture package was explained as “essential for renting out quickly” – “we keep a uniform standard in all the apartments,” he was told with complete confidence.

Eyal signed.

165,000 euros for the apartment. 12,000 for furniture. Another month of management fees in advance. Altogether: close to 177,000 euros, before taxes and associated costs.

And then, by chance, he went onto the same developer’s official website.

The same project. The same floor. The same apartment.

149,000 euros.

The first point to understand: the real gap isn’t 16,000 euros.

Because the furniture wasn’t included in the developer’s price. It was sold separately, through the marketer. In other words, the base price of the apartment went up by 16,000, plus another 12,000 for furniture that an independent check with a local supplier showed actually costs between 6,500 and 7,500 euros.

The total gap: 28,000 euros above the local market price.

Now, before anyone rushes to cry fraud – stop.

A marketer is allowed to charge a fee. Furniture costs money. Support, service, security, managing a deal remotely – all of these have value. There isn’t necessarily any breach of the law here.

But there is a different problem here, subtler and no less serious: Eyal didn’t know he was paying a premium. He thought it was the “developer’s price”. He didn’t understand that he was entering the same market where he would have to compete with buyers who paid 28,000 euros less.

And this brings us to the question every investor must ask before signing:

The return you were promised – what number is it calculated on?

The same rent, divided by a price that is 12,000 euros higher, gives a completely different picture.

On a PowerPoint slide the difference looks negligible. Over ten years, it’s tens of thousands of euros.

But even that isn’t the biggest problem.

The real problem will surface on the day Eyal wants to sell.

When that moment comes, a local valuer will look at comparable transactions in the area. And if identical apartments there sell for 149,000 to 155,000 euros, no presentation and no investor package will explain why his apartment is worth 177,000.

The premium paid for the “packaging” isn’t recorded in the land register.

When Eyal asked the marketer directly, he got an answer we’ve all heard in different versions:

“The price you see on the website is a local price. Foreign investors get a different product.”

That may very well be true. But a “different product” has to be analysed like a different product. A service of value comes with a transparent price tag, not with an explanation after the fact.

If the marketer had said up front, “The developer’s price is 149,000. We sell at 165,000 because we add support, deal management and a marketing margin,” Eyal could have decided whether it was worth it to him. Maybe yes, maybe no. But the decision would have been his.

The problem is that he didn’t get that information. And so the decision wasn’t as informed as he thought.

At the end of the call, I asked Eyal to sum up how he felt in one sentence.

He thought for a moment and said:

“It doesn’t bother me that someone made money on me. It bothers me that I didn’t know how much.”

That sentence stayed with me.

Because it didn’t express anger – it expressed a principle. And in my view, it’s the central principle every international real-estate investor should write above their desk:

Not every premium is a mistake. But every premium you didn’t understand is a risk.

So before any cross-border deal, there are three things you can’t skip:

1. Get the apartment’s price without brokerage directly from the developer, in writing.

2. Ask a local supplier for an independent quote for the furniture.

3. And calculate the return on the net price, not on the investor package.

And one question that’s always worth asking: if I were a local, how much would I pay for the same apartment?

Eyal chose to hold on to the property. The area is developing. There’s a good chance that in the long run he’ll still come out ahead.

But the real advantage in real estate doesn’t begin on the day you sell.

It begins on the day you buy.

At the price at which you entered the game.