This is an Open Access chapter of the volume Uneven Real Estate Development in Romania at the Intersection of Deindustrialization and Financialization, edited by Enikő Vincze, Ioana Florea, Manuel B. Aalbers (Routledge, first published 2024).
The chapter highlights that, in the wake of the 1990 regime change, Romanian state institutions backed up by European Union regulations supported the creation of the financial market, private banks and investment funds, and implemented a business-friendly fiscal system. After privatization, these measures acted as de-risking strategies necessary for the emergence and financialization of real estate development. The authors discuss the uneven manifestations of financialized real estate in two regional cities, Cluj-Napoca (from the North-West Development Region) and Iași (from the North-East), and reconstruct the different phases and means of collaboration between the state, supra-statal organizations, and capital in its advancement. The analysis contributes to the emerging literature on de-risking as a new regime of accumulation in advanced capitalism. It illustrates how the latter unfolds on the ground across unevenly developed regions, localities, and areas within localities, as resources that were hitherto outside the real estate market, including former industrial sites, have been absorbed into it while gradually integrated with financial markets.