One United Properties' EUR 10m Floreasca Plot: A EUR 130m Bucharest Tower Buyers No Longer Pre-Fund

If this were my development board, the first thing I would refuse to sign is a buyer-funded cash flow. In Romania that assumption stopped being true in December 2025.

On 12 October 2026 One United Properties announced a plot purchase on Barbu Vacarescu in Bucharest. The site is 5,755 sqm and the price was EUR 10m. The preliminary concept is four basement levels, a ground floor and 25 upper floors. Above-ground built area is about 25,900 sqm and the tower would pass 100 metres. Gross development value is put at about EUR 130m. An international architecture competition will choose the design.

The land is the smallest cheque in the file

EUR 10m across 5,755 sqm is about EUR 1,738 per square metre of site. Spread over 25,900 sqm of planned above-ground area it is about EUR 386 per buildable square metre. Against a EUR 130m development value the land is under 8 per cent of the programme. The remaining 92 per cent now arrives on a schedule the developer controls less than it used to.

One has already built heavily in this district. Completed schemes around Floreasca and Barbu Vacarescu carry about EUR 536m of development value. One Floreasca Sunset, One Peninsula and One Floreasca Club are under construction with about EUR 360m more. That makes the new plot an infill addition to a cluster the group already controls.

Law 207/2025 moved the buyer money to the end of the job

Law 207/2025 was published in the Official Gazette on 8 December 2025 and took effect on 11 December 2025. It rewrote off-plan selling. Promises to sell must be notarial and registered in the Land Register within one business day. Before any promise is signed a cadastral procedure must be complete. The building permit has to be noted and individual land books opened for each unit. Reservation fees are capped at 5 per cent of the price. A further 25 per cent falls due once the structure is finished. Another 20 per cent follows when installations are done.

Read that as a funding schedule. The land, the design competition, the permit and the frame are financed by equity and debt alone. Under the old rules a 30 per cent down payment released revenue and paid for concrete at the same time.

The half-year numbers show what the switch cost

One reported first-half turnover of RON 440m, down 47 per cent year on year. Net profit fell 68 per cent to RON 79.2m. On a like-for-like basis, stripping out the law, management put turnover at RON 742.5m and net profit at RON 178.1m. Reservations stood at about EUR 103m on 30 June 2026. Group cash fell to RON 371m.

Unit economics did not deteriorate. First-half residential transactions reached EUR 106.1m across 229 residential and commercial units. The average contracted price was EUR 3,853 per square metre, up 24 per cent year on year. Buyers kept signing. They simply signed reservations instead of promises.

Unit subdivision now sits on the critical path

The step that matters is pre-apartamentare, the subdivision of a finished building into separately registered units. Until that is done a developer can take reservations and nothing more. One finalised its first subdivisions in mid-June 2026. That was six to seven months after the law passed.

Then the registry broke. A cyberattack on ANCPI, the national cadastre and land registration agency, disrupted the system from 14 July 2026. Property transactions were blocked across the country. One resumed subdivision work only in the fortnight before its August results call. A public IT system is now a revenue dependency for every residential developer in Romania.

What this changes for the next land deal

Buying a plot in this regime is a longer and lonelier commitment than it was two years ago. Land, consent, design competition and structure should be underwritten as one unfunded block. Lenders will ask for more sponsor equity ahead of the frame. They will also want proof that the subdivision route is clear. Public sponsors have a sharper interest here than they realise. Permitting speed and registry uptime are now direct inputs into housing supply. Contractors should read the new tranches as a payment-risk change on every residential job they price. The developers that keep buying land through this window share one trait. Their balance sheets can carry a site with no buyer in sight.