When residents of Bucharest woke up on January 1, the first thing to suggest to them that they were now members of the EU was that the huge cigarette ads on street billboards had been torn down.

Not significant in itself, perhaps - except that EU law forbids cigarette advertising, so the Romanian authorities were on the ball and being good EU members.

What was significant was that those cigarette posters were overwhelmingly replaced with ads for residential property.

Now I'm not suggesting this in itself means that Bucharest is somewhere every savvy property investor should be headed (there are less subtle reasons for this!) But what it does illustrate is the breakneck speed this market is developing. Like the billboard ads switch, things are changing in this city almost overnight.

Basket case to boom town