When the land you want to build on belongs not to you but to the town hall or the state, the route is usually not a purchase. It is a concession. The Urban Planning Code has a whole title on it, with a pricing rule you rarely see in the notices: the fee, the redevență, is not set however the council likes, but by reference to the price of the land.
Below, what the law says about the cost, about the auction and about the cases with no auction. Which right over the land a permit needs in general is covered separately, in the article on a permit on rented land.
Which land can be conceded for building
Article 319 sets three conditions. Land belonging to the state or to a local authority, in the public or private domain, may be conceded for building only if the proposed works comply with the approved urban planning and spatial planning documentation (para. 1). Public-domain land is conceded only for buildings of public use or public interest (para. 2). And vacant land administered by local councils that is subject to restitution claims by former owners, filed within the deadline of Legea nr. 10/2001, cannot be conceded at all (para. 3).
For a house, in practice, the question concerns land in the locality’s private domain.
The fee: market price, recovered over 25 years
Article 322 is short, and it is the part that matters for the budget. The minimum fee is set, as the case may be, by the local council, the county council, the Bucharest General Council or the Government. Not arbitrarily: it must recover within 25 years the sale price of the land at market conditions, plus the cost of the related infrastructure works.
An order-of-magnitude sum helps. For land valued at 150,000 lei with 25,000 lei of related infrastructure, a simple division over 25 years gives 7,000 lei a year. The figure is only an illustration. The law says what must be recovered and over how long, but not how the calculation is done: whether interest, indexation or other costs are counted. The authority chooses the method by decision, and the result is a minimum. The winning bid can be higher.
The practical consequence: a fee that looks small in year one has to be read together with the length of the concession and the market price of the land it reflects.
The auction, step by step
Article 321 sets out the procedure:
- land put up for auction is announced at the authority’s seat and in at least two widely circulated newspapers, at least 20 days in advance (para. 1);
- the notice gives the date and place of the auction, the area and the use of the land under the planning documentation, and the minimum annual fee (para. 2);
- the bid comes with a pre-feasibility or feasibility study, as the case may be, describing the building, its capacity, the land occupancy and the other elements of the urbanism certificate. Bids that do not comply with the approved planning documentation are not accepted (para. 3);
- the auction is run by a commission set up by decision of the local or county council or the General Council, or by Government decision for state land (para. 4);
- until the award, any interested person may challenge the auction at the local court. The challenge suspends the auction until finally resolved (para. 5);
- the concession deed is concluded on the basis of the award record, and the concessionaire registers it in the land registry within 10 days of the award or of the decision (para. 6).
The pre-feasibility study is a cost you incur before you know whether you have won. It belongs in the budget from the start.
When no auction is needed
Article 320 allows concession without auction, or free use for a limited period, in four cases: public-utility or charitable projects of a social, non-profit nature; relocating households hit by disasters; extending buildings onto adjoining land; works protecting historic monuments, with the Ministry of Culture’s binding approval.
The case that concerns an ordinary owner is the third. You may ask, without auction, for an adjoining area of at most 300 mp, if it has no access to a public road and can only be built on by joining it to other plots (para. 1 lit. c). If several neighbours ask for the same land, the concession goes to auction, open also to holders of a right of way granted by the owner of the adjoining land (para. 2).
How much land, for what, for how long
For housing, Article 323 caps the conceded areas, subject to the local planning rules. In towns: up to 450 mp per flat in a ground-floor or ground-plus-one building, up to 300 mp per flat in a ground-plus-one building with two flats, up to 250 mp per flat in buildings with more floors and at most six flats. Above six flats, the planning documentation sets the area. In villages, up to 1,000 mp per dwelling.
Article 323 refers to the land described in Article 329, which is the article on the authority competent for transport infrastructure works. The reference looks wrong, most likely meant as Article 319, but that is what the law says.
The length of the concession is set by the same authority, depending on the planning documentation and on the nature of the building. The law gives no number of years. Before a concession, the land must be entered in the land registry (Art. 324).
Young people come first
Article 325 para. (1) gives priority to requests made under Legea nr. 15/2003, on support for young people building their own home, over any other request for allocation, concession, sale or rental. If the home locality cannot resolve the request, it can be filed with the localities immediately next to it (para. 3).
What comes after the concession
The concession settles the land, not the permit. Whether your right as concessionaire lets you build is judged under Article 245, and the urbanism certificate and the permit follow the usual steps, described on the page on the building permit.
This article is analysis, not legal advice. Provisions are cited from Legea 169/2026, published in Monitorul Oficial no. 661 of 10 August 2026. Check your own situation with the issuing authority. Romanian legal terms are kept in the original, because the Romanian text is the one that governs.