More than 108,000 properties were sold in Romania between July and September 2026, 66,269 fewer than during the same period last year, according to data from the National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Advertising (ANCPI). The decrease occurred amid a cyberattack that affected the institution’s operations and blocked or delayed numerous transactions.
In total, 108,437 houses, plots of land, and apartments were sold, compared with 174,706 in the third quarter of 2025. The most transactions took place in Bucharest, with 20,298 properties, followed by Timiș County, with 7,517, and Ilfov County, with 7,231. At the opposite end were Teleorman, with 56 sales, Vrancea, with 557, and Covasna, with 606.
Among county seats, the most transactions were recorded in Timișoara, Constanța, and Iași. During the same period, ANCPI reported 69,206 mortgages, 26,582 fewer than the previous year, as well as 1,418 operations for registering future assets.
The ransomware attack on ANCPI was launched on July 14, 2026, and affected the virtualization infrastructure, the e-Terra application, email systems, and the issuance of land registry extracts. The e-Terra platform was restarted in stages beginning on August 11, after several weeks of disruptions in the real estate market.
Context: The IT outages at ANCPI delayed thousands of transactions and affected mortgage loansBefore the reporting of sales for July–September 2026, the real estate market had already been disrupted by an IT outage at ANCPI, which prevented the obtaining of land registry extracts and the registration of ownership rights or mortgages. As a result, more than 5,000 transactions, with a total value of €1 billion, were delayed, and the granting of mortgage loans was postponed.
The situation was associated with risks such as the expiration of preliminary contracts and pre-approval periods for loans, with possible additional costs and litigation. At the same time, home sales recorded declines in Bucharest and Ilfov, as well as nationwide in the first half of the year, according to previous information.
At the same time, details emerged about maintenance expenses incurred by ANCPI for its IT systems, including the e-Terra application, which is essential for the cadastre and land registry, in the context of the institution being affected by the cyber incident.
