The Simion plan promises to build 1 million apartments for half or a third of the real price. The AUR party leader would get people into apartments in return for an advance of 1,000 euros.
The date of the presidential election has barely been decided (November 24th is the first round and December 8th is the second round), the campaign, if not officially, has actually already started, just think of the billboards depicting PNL president Nicolae Ciucă flooding the country.
In recent days, the ultra-nationalist AUR has also intensified its campaign, the party chairman George Simion has published his economic program under the title Simion Plan (Planul Simion).
Simion, who is famous for his riots in the Úzvölgy cemetery and scandals in the parliament, is the most famous promise of the housing construction program at a discounted price, in the framework of which applicants could get a property for as little as 35,000 euros. This would be the price of two-room apartments, three-room apartments would cost 50,000 euros, and four-room apartments would cost 70,000 euros. The far-right party leader promises to build no less than 1 million apartments in 10 years, of course only if he becomes the next resident of the Cotroceni Palace.
The first weak point of the resounding promise is that the power of the current Romanian head of state does not extend to housing construction, unless the party behind it governs, it is simply not possible to implement such a program.
The delivery of 100,000 apartments per year seems rather illusory in the current financial and economic situation. Last year, 71,454 apartments were built in the country, and in the first quarter of 2024, only 11,360, approx. 25 percent less than in the same period last year. Of course, the real estate market demand largely depends on the prices, and it is likely that the 35,000-euro apartments would be sought after like sugar. The only question is whether this price is realistic.
On the website of the Simion plan, it is stated that for this amount of money it will be possible to buy a 50-55 square meter two-room apartment in the event that the AUR presidential candidate wins the election. Considering the current market prices, this amount seems like a phantasmagoria.
Correct price?
On olx.ro, the largest domestic classifieds portal, more than 2,000 apartments are offered for less than 35,000 euros. However, the thing has two beauty flaws, and they are not small. The properties in question are located almost exclusively in economically disadvantaged settlements from which the population is migrating, so there is an oversupply on the market: Vajdahunyad, Zsil-völgy mining towns, Corabia, Moreni, Rovinari, Brad, Motru, Bârlad, Tövis, Vaskohsziklás, Zalatna, Kudzir, Adjud, Balánbánya, etc. These cheap properties are typically apartment blocks built during communism, and moreover, based on the photos, they need a thorough renovation.
The other problem is their size, as the vast majority of them do not even come close to 50 square meters. Among the tens of thousands of real estate ads on Olx, there are only 94 that meet both criteria, most of them in former industrial cities that began to decline after the regime change, where hardly anyone wants to move.
The Romanian real estate market is concentrated in Bucharest and the counties of Cluj, Timisoara, Brasov, Ilfov and Constanța, where 58 percent of all domestic sales took place in May. However, in Bucharest, Cluj, Timisoara, Brasov, Constanța and their surrounding areas, you can only dream of a property that can be called an apartment for 35,000 euros.
"On the condition that the state provides the plot and public art, there is no reason why Romanian entrepreneurs should not make a profit if they sell the product for 35,000 euros. (…) In this way, every Romanian, whether a bricklayer or a carpenter, will have the right to buy an apartment at a fair price," says Marius Lulea, the first vice-president of the AUR, in a paid campaign article.
However, this claim is refuted by the construction contractors. The cost price of an apartment largely depends on the quality of the building materials used, as well as the location of the plot, as concrete is more expensive the farther it has to be transported, says János Frinkuj, from the Kisbács real estate development company, Fritech kft. co-owner. In Cluj-Napoca and its surroundings, without the plot, the self-cost price per square meter starts at 1,000 euros and can go up to 1,500 euros, he says. In other regions, where construction wages are lower, this amount may be somewhat lower.
However, in the gigantic housing program promised by Simion, the price is a maximum of 700 euros/square meter, which includes the contractor's profit. According to the Kisbács businessman, this value is completely unrealistic.
Telephone number and personal number
However, the AUR bluff is not so limited. Within the framework of the Simion plan, it is not only about apartments, but also "shopping centers, kindergartens, schools, offices, doctors' surgeries, at least four-lane roads, parks, sports fields, etc. will be built" . Buyers will be able to get a two-room apartment for a down payment of 1,000 euros, and the monthly installment will be 115 euros, unchanged for 25 years, regardless of inflation and the exchange rate of the euro. There is no word on where they would find a bank that would lend under such conditions.
"Since the duration of the project is 10 years, the financing requirement is only 20 billion euros, since the apartments will be sold later. We will achieve real savings with only 20 billion euros, and the value of the assets created will exceed 75 billion euros," reads the aforementioned paid advertising article. How did you come up with these numbers? The staff of the AUR campaign team probably don't know that either, there's a good chance they got punched in the stomach.
The state housing program is not the only impossibility in the Simion plan, which offers interest-free refinancing to real estate borrowers and promises to reduce tax burdens, more precisely taxes on gross wages. How taxes could be reduced, which would entail a decrease in state revenues, while the budget deficit is already horrendous, is naturally beyond the scope of the program bearing the hallmarks of cheap populism.
Perhaps, beyond being an electoral sham, the Simion plan serves a purpose other than manipulating naive voters.
In order for someone to get an apartment under the Simion plan, they must sign a "contract" via the planulsimion.ro website, which requires their personal data: exact name, social security number and phone number. By concluding the fake contract, the person accepts that they can be contacted for "communication and marketing purposes". It is likely that phishing is one of the very specific goals of the election program made up of resounding impossibilities.
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