WHY WE DO THIS
We came back to Romania after twenty years abroad, without a grand plan, to start over in our native Carpathians. We lived in Georgia, Colorado, and Montana, traveling across North America from coast to coast. We saw the Rockies in the U.S. and Canada, walked under giant redwood trees, watched fireflies in Appalachia, and had moose graze in our backyard in Colorado. We chased bears away from our trash and skied in places people travel across the world to reach.
We built a good life there. We also never fully settled.
Family brought us back to Romania sooner than expected. Once we returned, we saw the country differently: cities full of energy, festivals, music, fast internet, improving infrastructure, and all of Europe within reach.
We found the buzzing silence of the Carpathians unchanged. Spring birdsong concerts, maybe a bell in the distance, cattle coming home in the evening, a dog somewhere you can't see. The landscape is still intact and close to what it has always been, and never far from a city. While Romania has its challenges, it also has something increasingly rare: space, continuity, and a chance to get things right.
What we also found is that doing anything here still depends on knowing someone. Which notary, which builder, which office, which piece of paper comes before which other piece of paper. Romanians manage it by asking family. Everyone else guesses, and pays for guessing. We spent our first two years back here learning that the expensive way, on our own house.
That is the gap NOBS works in. Whether you are renting for a season, buying land, building, or setting up something here, the problem is the same: the information exists, mostly in Romanian, and the price often depends on who is asking.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
We work for one side. Yours. We take no commission from an agent, a seller, a landlord, a builder, a notary, or anyone we introduce you to. Our fee is agreed in writing before we start and it does not move with the price of anything. Nobody on any list we give you is there because they paid to be.
We deliver facts and gaps. What the record says, where it came from, what could not be established, and what needs a specialist we are not. We do not dress an uncertainty up as a finding, and we do not tell you a thing is fine when we have not checked it. If we are not sure, you get told we are not sure.
We do not play games with declared values, and we will not help anyone get around something. If what you want is a way through a rule rather than a way to satisfy it, we are the wrong people and we will say so early.
Sometimes we say no. If a purchase is wrong we say it is wrong. If we are not the right people for a job, we say that too. If you are looking for someone to agree with everything, we are probably not it.
We keep things small on purpose. Two or three clients at a time, a waiting list when there are more. That is a choice, not a stage we are trying to grow out of. It is the only way one person can read every document that goes out with his name on it.
TOM
Tom left material science to study languages, then worked as a translator and protocol officer at the Philippine Embassy in Bucharest. He has been authorised by Romania's Ministry of Justice as a translator and interpreter for English since 1998.
He bought his first computer in 1988 and never really stopped. Networks, internet cafes, computer stores, the first digital English-Romanian dictionary sold in bookstores. Then two decades in enterprise IT in the United States: systems engineering, data centres, and critical infrastructure for large companies, ending as principal systems engineer and technical lead at Itron, responsible for several thousand machines across six data centres and a team spread over three continents. He got an MBA at the University of Denver along the way.
Since 2023 he has used AI tools daily and paid attention to how they fail. Confident invention, agreeing with whatever the question implied, weak spatial reasoning, numbers that look right and are not. Thirty years of systems work is useful preparation for that, because it is the same habit: check it against the source before anyone acts on it.
The mountains were always there. Carpathians, Appalachians, Colorado, Montana.
Seven houses bought, owned and maintained in Romania and three US states, which is a longer education in property than any qualification he holds. An e-bike bought out of curiosity became the first of its kind to operate as a rental near Glacier National Park, founded in 2018. With help from local partners it grew into a small hotel and a general store, a Montana operation built from a backyard and sold in 2024. He has stories.
NOBS comes out of the synthesis of all of these old lives: the IT background, the translation work, the hospitality years, the houses, and the mountains.
CRISTINA
Cristina graduated in Material Science with an engineering degree in Romania, then worked as a database administrator and a store manager. In the United States she went back to college and spent her career in healthcare, working as a licensed dental hygienist across three US states. Doctors trusted her, patients kept coming back, and colleagues kept in touch long after she moved on. She knows how to care. She has an eye for detail, which is the engineering training. She is also direct in a way people tend to appreciate once they get used to it.
Dental hygiene is regulated very differently here, so she could not carry on with it. She took her ACPI real estate certification instead and runs the office side of NOBS: client communication, translation intake, administration, and everything that has to happen on time. She meets clients directly and she is the main contact for Romanian professionals and contractors, which requires a particular kind of patience.
She is also the reason we have four dogs and two cats. Once abandoned puppies are brought in, they are hard to resist.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT US
We don't have NOBS client testimonials yet. We are just getting started.
We do have eight years of running hospitality in Montana and 30 years of renting, buying and selling property in both Romania and the US. Our Astrid Cabin and Sky Eco Rentals both earned five-star ratings on Airbnb and Google.
People trusted us with their vacations. They came back. They wrote about it.
Read some of the reviews above. We hold NOBS to the same standard.
Both locations still in operation by current owners.
ASTRID CABIN MONTANA
SKY ECO RENTALS