The Real Estate Market in the ’90s Cover Image

The Real Estate Market in the ’90s
The Real Estate Market in the ’90s

Author(s): Claudia Băltăţoiu, Monica Cherecheş,
Subject(s): Anthropology
Published by: Muzeul Ţăranului Român, Editura Martor
Keywords: (post)communism; transition; democracy; estate market; trade; centralized economy; capitalism; private property;

Summary/Abstract: The first Romanian real estate agency was set up in April 1990, while now they are at least “three in each block of flats”, as a real estate agent once remarked. The amplitude reached by this phenomenon is closely connected with the country’s transition from a totalitarian regime to democracy, from a centralized economy to a capitalist one, from common property and stateowned factories to private property. Most of the people living in cities became owners of their flats virtually “over night”, and all they had to do for that was to pay a symbolic sum to the state. Once that deal was perfected, the flat became an exchange object on a market that was free, yet new, uncertain and unstable. The Pandora box now open, all the ills of the trade have come to the surface (cheats, speculations, theft, frauds), as well as the hope trade gives you (solving a problem, a better life). The image of the real estate agent is perceived against this dual background. In our analysis, we viewed the real estate market as a system, and the real estate agent as the representative figure for the system. In other words, the analysis of the representative category will suggest the evolution of the whole system.

  • Issue Year: 2005
  • Issue No: 10
  • Page Range: 142-148
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: English