Six Lines on a Folded Sheet

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 in 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 out 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, on a Zoom call that started with a completely different question. Gil asked whether now, after the Nordis law, it was safe to buy an off-plan apartment in Romania. I answered that the law doesn't answer that question. But it does answer another one, no less important: what exactly to ask.

Gil's daughter is studying medicine in Cluj, third year out of six. For three years he has been paying rent, and every summer brings another increase. His math was simple: a two-room apartment near the university, for his daughter to live in until the end of her studies, and then to be rented out to the next student. A new project, a ten-minute walk from campus, handover planned for summer 2028.

The law, which came into force on December 11, 2025, amended the Romanian Construction Quality Law and the land registry law. Every line on Gil's sheet came from one clause in it.

The first line: is the building permit registered in the land registry? Without it, you can't sign a preliminary agreement for a future apartment. The agreement itself is signed only before a notary, who submits it for registration the same day or the next working day. The law is meant to close off the possibility of selling the same apartment twice.

The second line: which account do the down payments go to? By law, to a separate bank account dedicated only to this project. The third: who approves payments out of it? The site supervisor. Without his approval, the money doesn't go out.

The fourth line: how much do you pay at 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 allows up to 25% of the price to be drawn from the account for the frame, and once the frame is finished, up to another 20% for the building systems. About what's beyond that, and about exactly when the developer can 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 didn't come from the law at all: what happens if handover is late? In Romania, when the date for signing the final contract passes without an agreed extension, the buyer is entitled to claim compensation from the developer. It's best for the amount to be written in advance, and not left open 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 missing a beat. He showed a land registry extract with the permit registered. He gave the project account details and the supervisor's name. On the fifth line, he proposed wording himself: the money beyond the caps stays in the account until the occupancy permit. "You're the first buyer who's asked me about this," he told Gil. "Most people only ask about the floor."

And then the reservation form arrived.

The sales agent sent it that same evening. A 10% reservation fee, and a ninety-day reservation period. Gil took a photo and sent it to me with a single question mark.

It wasn't a trick. It was a form from before the law that had stayed on the sales agent's computer. But a form like that isn't a technicality. A reservation that exceeds the cap is exposed to the argument that it's void, and someone who signed it in good faith may find himself arguing about his money instead of about the apartment.

I wrote to the developer. The answer came the next day, with an apology and a corrected form: 5%, sixty days.

Except that in the meantime almost two weeks had gone by. And the apartment Gil wanted, on the fourth floor with the balcony facing the hill, was sold to someone who signed the old form without asking anything.

Gil took the apartment below it. Same layout, without the view.

"He got the balcony," Gil wrote to me after the signing at the notary. "I got a contract I understand."

I sometimes think about that other buyer. Most likely everything will work out for him. The developer is serious, the form has already been corrected, the project is progressing. But he signed a document that didn't comply with the law, and he has no idea.

Most of the investors who come to me ask whether the new law protects them. That's a yes-or-no question, and this law doesn't work that way. It guarantees nothing on its own. It gives you a list. Whoever comes to the meeting with the list quickly discovers which developer knows how to answer, and where the law itself leaves a blank that has to be filled in the contract.