Marina Solovieva, Program Director of the Independent Center Expert grup
The National Bureau of Statistics published these figures based on the 2024 Population and Housing Census.
“According to earlier data from the NBS, there are a total of 390,298 dwellings in the municipality of Chisinau; therefore, 77% of them are occupied, while 23% (or 88,356) are vacant,” comments Marina Solovyova, program director at the Independent Center Expert Grup. “This is lower than the national average, which includes abandoned villages, but it’s still a significant number for a city with high housing and rental prices.”
Most vacant apartments are in new buildings
“If you look closely at the structure of housing by construction period, you can see that the largest share of vacant apartments is concentrated in new buildings,” Solovyova noted. “In buildings constructed between 2016 and 2024, nearly half—42%, or 26,732—are vacant. These are units that were either not sold by developers and agents, or were purchased by people not for living in or renting out, but as a means of preserving capital.”
The expert wonders how to distinguish one category from the other. In older new-construction buildings (1991–2015), the share of vacant apartments has remained stable at 24–26%. It is unlikely that they could not have been sold over so many years.
It can be assumed that in new buildings from 2016–2024, the share of apartments that were purchased and remain vacant is the same 25%, while the remaining 17% of non-residential apartments are unsold. That amounts to approximately 11,000 units.
“People might question the accuracy of the statistics,” says Marina Solovyova. “Since not everyone agreed to speak with census takers, some apartments may have been counted as vacant. But that’s not the case. The National Bureau of Statistics also took into account information from indirect sources.”
If the door wasn’t opened, the census taker would ask neighbors whether anyone lived in the building. The NBS also requested data from electricity providers. If an apartment consumed electricity during the census period, it was considered occupied.
What conclusions can be drawn?
“I think the statistics on vacant housing are accurate—or, if anything, they’re underestimated rather than overestimated,” Marina Solovyova concludes.
The reason for the rapid rise in real estate prices in Chisinau lies not so much in a lack of supply (there are 88,000 unoccupied apartments and houses in the city—one in every four homes) as in other factors, the expert emphasizes.
“Logos Press has already reported that the Residential Property Price Index (RPPI), published by the NBM, is based on asking prices —that is, on sellers’ ‘ask prices’—rather than on the prices of actual real estate transactions,” says the expert. “But the prices set by sellers do not match buyers’ affordability. Supply and demand do not meet at a single price point, as evidenced by the low number of transactions. Therefore, it is difficult to say anything about the actual market price of real estate.”
Lack of Alternatives in the Local Capital Market
Separately, the expert notes the large share of vacant apartments off the market. They are neither rented nor sold because they were purchased for the purpose of preserving capital, “due to a lack of imagination and alternatives.”
“There really is a problem with investment alternatives in the local capital market,” she states. “If you want, put your money in a bank deposit at an interest rate below inflation. Or buy government bonds, knowing you can’t sell them on the secondary market before maturity. For thrill-seekers, there are crowdfunding platforms. And that’s about it, really. Retail company stocks? Never heard of them. Of course, you can buy assets abroad, but the average person here isn’t usually ready for that: they lack both the knowledge and the willingness to take risks. And as long as our capital market remains underdeveloped, the practice of investing in apartment purchases will continue.”
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