Housing Criza?

The economic crisis is BIG news here as much as it is anywhere. Newspapers, conversations constantly discuss it, and I even saw a club in town advertising an anti-CRIZA party playing music from the 70s and 80s. 

I have heard two different stories about the state of building and construction. In the village, I hear that building and construction has taken a downturn, the timber producing plants are laying people off and working less hours, and that some firms have even gone bankrupt. 

On the other hand, I heard from a builder in Suceava and a building supplies manager in Cluj that house building is still moving forward. The builder in Suceava said that they were still making and selling suburban-like houses around Suceava. He insisted that the housing crisis hadn't affected their area at all. Similarly, the Cluj builder said that people in Romania who have been planning on building their houses for years aren't going to stop, their plans haven't changed based on the new economic situation.

This is one major difference I find in the American versus European mentality to housebuilding/buying/selling.  In America, people buy and sell houses as they change jobs or have more kids.  Moving from your hometown, to your college town, to your first-job town, back to either hometown or 'adopted' hometown, and then finally to your retirement town, isn't all that unheard of. Some people move even more, some less. In the process, people buy and sell, buy and sell: Buy a house with 15% down and a 15, 20, 30 year mortgage that is never paid off before selling again. Particularly with the American OBSESSION with McMansions and SPACE and useless hallways and unused rooms that just store furniture and 15 extra bedrooms and a jacuzzi in the bathroom, this leads to the overextending of assets, too many loans, too many bills, not enough money.

Europeans on the other hand tend to build their own houses. Apartment life is more common in general, and people move from their home apartment to their W.G./student apartment and then to their married with kids apartment. And that's just about it. Houses are saved up for a lifetime, and built piece by piece as money allows. I have one uncle who had a plot of land, about 1/4 acre or so, where he used to have just a garden hut and that was used as a garden and summertime hang out. Over years, he laid a foundation, erected a frame, plaster, insulation, paint etc etc and has a house now. He did a lot of the work himself, hiring hourly labor occasionally.  In Romania, similarly, half built houses are the norm here. A small structure is built, and over years and decades, more rooms, another floor are added. I suspect that in the country-side, even, banks aren't even used and this lifetime investment is where all money goes. 

Thus, with job-loss risk, perhaps some building has slowed. And large-scale construction has probably trickled to a halt as well. But the average person in Romania does not seem stricken by the housing crisis issue at all.