I was surfing on the internet and just out of curiosity I have entered a site with real-estate businesses. There have been a few interesting offers, but they all had a general flaw, which I personally hate about the new flats that are being built in Cluj: almost none of the flats have underground parking. A few levels into the ground would really not hurt, if nothing else, it would add extra stability… but no… not in Cluj…
As I was surfing among the offers I have stumbled upon one which said it had underground parking… wow… I was amazed, could this be possible? I checked the pictures and the floor-plan: quite good. It was a one-room apartment for €38.500 in a very good area (Zorilor) and the ad said that a garage comes with it also. I did a quick calculation and I realized that with the new house-loan program that the country has (“prima casa”), the monthly rates would be a bit more than the rent I am paying right now. I decided to take a look the next day.
The second day I called the real-estate agency. My first question was if the garage was really in the price of the apartment: this is where the first surprise hit me… the answer was NO, an extra €6.000 is charged for that. Well, I thought no problem, maybe I’ll pay the extra. I decided to arrange a meeting to see the apartment. When I got to the agency I had to sign a paper which said, that I would have to pay the agency an additional 2% of the flat price if a deal would be made… interesting… another €800 or so… On the road we picked up another agent who was supposed to show us around. In the car the two agents immediately started to talk about how well business went and how few apartments were left for sale… yeah right I thought (Nice move however from the agents 😉 ).
We got to the flats and had a look at the apartments: there have been various arrangements on different levels, but I was told, that there were only 5 flats left… (nice move again…). The apartments had a pretty decent quality, however they were not really impressing. The isolation was however really good: no heating and in the -10 degrees, which was outside, nothing could be felt in the apartments… The down side was, that the apartment which had the price tag from the ad was actually quite small, on the top floor and nothing like the one described in the ad. The apartment described in the ad was actually €42.000…
I asked the agent to have a look at the garage also: nice, but dusty and seemed like a construction site (although it was ready for more than a year). The really big problem which appeared however, was the fact that I could only pay for the garage with cash down:€6.500 for one spot in the underground parking area, or maybe if I have cash at the spot when paying, I could get it for less:€5.500…
OK, I said… I’ll call you tomorrow with my decision…
I was really determined to go on with the arrangement, but all day long something was bugging me and made me uncomfortable… something was not right. I stepped back and analyzed again the problem: now it did not seam like it was a good idea anymore: the full price got up to €49.300 and I had to pay around €8.000 as an advance… I said NO: this would eat up all my salary and practically I could not save up anything for 30 years… not nice…
In general it is quite easy to get into the fever of buying something and agents are on a hunt for that. They almost had me, too. I think when buying something this big, it is wise to step back and re-analyze everything with a clear mind: just imagine that you do not want to buy it and you hate the flat, no matter how good it is. It might seem that it is a once in a lifetime opportunity, but it isn’t: there will always be good opportunities and flats will only get better and better in time. Who knows, maybe one day there will be also in Cluj flats with proper underground parking…
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