The average monthly payment on a 25-year mortgage used to buy a one-bedroom apartment in Bucharest represented 55% of Romania’s average net wage in July, according to the Ipotecare.ro Mortgage Affordability Index. The ratio stood at 54% at the beginning of 2026 and is expected to remain around its current level at the start of next year.
The index assumed the purchase of a 50 sqm apartment in Bucharest valued at EUR 117,500, up 4.2% from the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, Romania’s average net wage in July was 5.5% higher than in the same month of 2025.
The average interest rate on newly issued Romanian mortgages was approximately 5.50%, slightly below the 5.55% level recorded at the beginning of 2026. Ipotecare.ro said that it expects the average rate to remain unchanged at the start of 2027.
“Mortgage affordability remained at a good level throughout 2026, especially given that wages in Romania’s major cities are higher than the national average, meaning that average mortgage payments account for a smaller share of borrowers’ income,” said Laurențiu Bogdan, managing partner at Ipotecare.ro.
He added that several banks offered fixed interest rates below 5%, while house-price growth slowed and sellers became more flexible during negotiations.
When measured against Bucharest’s average net wage of EUR 1,406 in July, the estimated mortgage payment represented 43% of monthly income. The wage data were published by Romania’s National Institute of Statistics.
The estimated IRCC reference rate for the first quarter of 2027 is 5.58%, based on the daily values published so far. Despite the projected IRCC level, Ipotecare.ro expects the mortgage payment-to-national wage ratio to remain at approximately 55%.
A similar affordability ratio was last recorded at the beginning of 2020, shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic, the same source said. At the time, a new one-bedroom apartment in Bucharest cost an average of EUR 69,500 – 41% less than today – while the average mortgage interest rate was 5.22% and the national average net wage stood at EUR 668.
Affordability has improved substantially since early 2008, when the average mortgage payment required to buy a one-bedroom Bucharest apartment was approximately 2.3 times the national average net wage, according to the broker.
Ipotecare.ro is an online mortgage broker that processed approximately 27,500 financing simulations and arranged more than 600 mortgages in 2025, with over 1,000 additional applications in progress.
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