Bucharest apartments & rentals: how to choose
Apartments are a strong option in Bucharest: the housing stock is spacious, supply is deep in exactly the residential districts hotels ignore — Cotroceni, Dorobanți, Floreasca — and the price gap against a hotel is real once there are more than two of you. Romania is also, genuinely, one of the more permissive short-term-rental markets in the EU. But permissive is not the same as unregulated, and the licensing rules below are the part travellers get wrong.
⚠︎ Book a legal listing
Be clear about what Bucharest does and does not restrict. There is no annual night cap, no principal-residence requirement and no district-level ban — nothing resembling the Paris, Amsterdam or New York regimes, and any listing you like is almost certainly allowed to exist. What Romanian law regulates instead is licensing. A property let to tourists must hold a certificat de clasificare issued by the tourism authority within the Ministry of Economy, Digitalisation, Entrepreneurship and Tourism; since Order 985/2024 the application also needs the consent of the building’s owners’ association or immediate neighbours, and an individual host may only classify up to seven rooms in total — beyond that the activity has to run through a registered company. Two newer layers sit on top. Romania’s national tourism system (SIT/SITUR) now requires accommodation units to be registered and guests to be recorded, and under EU Regulation 2024/1028, which applies from 20 May 2026, each unit needs a unique registration code that Airbnb, Booking and Vrbo must collect before a listing can stay up. Romania issues those codes through the SITUR platform, and the rollout has been slower than the deadline — so in practice a perfectly legal Bucharest apartment may show a code, a classification certificate, or neither yet. Treat a host who can name one of the two as a good sign and one who will not discuss it as a reason to book elsewhere; verify the current state of the rollout with the official source below rather than assuming it has settled.
Rules change — confirm the current requirements: SITUR — Romania’s national tourism registration system (Ministry of Economy & Tourism).
Who a rental suits
Rentals suit families and groups — Romanian flats are big — travellers staying a week or more who want to shop at Obor or a neighbourhood piață and cook, and anyone who wants to live in Cotroceni or Dorobanți, where hotels barely exist. For a two-night city break centred on the Old Town, a hotel is usually simpler and the saving is small.
Verify before you book
- Whether the host will name a classification certificate (certificat de clasificare) or a SITUR registration code in writing — this is the compliance question in Romania, not a night cap.
- That the 10-lei-per-person-per-night city tourist tax is either included or flagged; on apartments it is sometimes collected in cash on arrival rather than through the platform.
- The exact building and floor, and whether there is a working lift; many central blocks are five or six storeys with a small original lift or none.
- Air conditioning — not a given in older apartments, and a serious problem in a July heatwave.
- Walking distance to a metro entrance rather than to a metro station name; Bucharest stations have long platforms and widely-spaced exits.
- Whether the flat faces a pedestrian bar street, a tram line or an interior courtyard — the difference between the three is the difference between sleeping and not.
- Recent reviews mentioning hot water and heating; much of the city runs on a district heating network with occasional planned outages, most often in summer.
- Check-in logistics and who to call at 2am — many Bucharest listings are managed remotely with a lockbox and no on-site host.
Where to look for rentals
Cotroceni has the most characterful stock — interwar and neo-Romanian villas divided into apartments on quiet streets near the Botanical Garden. Dorobanți, Floreasca and Aviatorilor offer the best modern apartments and the best restaurants within walking distance. The Old Town and the streets immediately around it have the largest tourist-facing supply and the worst noise exposure. Unirii and Tineretului give you big, cheap, plain flats in Communist-era blocks with excellent metro access and the parks nearby.
Check live rentals & availability
Browse current Bucharest apartments on Vrbo — then ask the host to confirm their classification certificate or registration code in writing.
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