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Post by rijekafan on Feb 6, 2007 15:56:19 GMT 1
Mambo, I was offering my property as collateral. I only wanted to borrow €40k when the official valuation of my place is over €80k. I also offered to put up two years interest. Also what do I care if the people I am borrowing from go broke? Then the loan will simply transfer to the liquidator. You have some really good ideas by the way. Speaking of new fangled ideas, I have one I am trying to organise and that is vendor finance. Almost everyone I have spoken to about it says it will never work here. I got a new lawyer today and we think we have come up with a way where we mimic the financing structure of off the plan properties. Any ideas?
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Post by rijekafan on Feb 8, 2007 14:17:13 GMT 1
Properties in HR are so unrealistically priced that anyone in their right mind would not want to buy. The state of most of the resale houses are shocking. One wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. Buying offplan is a nightmare and a half. I think you are overgeneralising. There are still bargains to be had but you have to know your areas really well and be able to understand nekretnine hrvatski (Real estate Croatian) I only speak nightmare Croatian but I can read all the stuff in the ads except when they are nonsensical or totaly illiterate. I am buying as we speak and I know of other bargains which I just dont have the capital for at the moment. I agree with you that off the plan stuff is scary as hell and I would never touch it. It is also invariably hideously ugly.
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Post by rijekafan on Feb 8, 2007 14:20:50 GMT 1
My personal opinion is that the property market here is undergoing a structural change which can justify future price increases. I really don't see any justification for the same thing in equities however.[/quote]
Carol, I have been investing in equities for 30 years and their pricing can be irrational. Good rule of thumb is dont pay more than 10 times price earnings. (PE) I only buy small oil and gas stocks with existing production.
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Post by Carol on Feb 8, 2007 17:25:11 GMT 1
whoever claimed anything else about equities? If you follow that rule then you are a value investor. It works in phases: sometimes value, sometimes growth. Working out the signals for a switch is an art that i don't anyone or machine has truly mastered (or they would be well known for their wealth!).
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Post by dravlic on Feb 9, 2007 12:48:05 GMT 1
Prices will keep going up next 2-3 years. When Croatia will enter to EU price will be real, an slow going up ...
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Post by rijekafan on Feb 11, 2007 11:28:23 GMT 1
No offence but this statement is so general it invites rebuttal. Zagreb is going down. Istria is not so flash and in general one cant say that property will go up in general in Croatia. In many places it is overpriced now and in others it will probably never go up due to the fact that its in Vukujebine. I believe it will go up further in certain places but this is just a guess which may be wrong.
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Post by hansel on Feb 11, 2007 23:00:36 GMT 1
There is something called intuition as well.
As for the knowledge, in Istria there are different segments regarding properties.
In Rovinj, for example, there is so little building land left which creates shortage of new apartments (that are still sought by foreign and domestic buyers) and of course it results in high asking price of about 3000 Euro for a sqm at the moment. And they are all sold before a building is finished, demand higher than supply.
On the other hand there are big houses that don’t meet requirements of holiday, first time buyer, etc. home but are sold at similar prices as new apartments in Rovinj. Of course they stay on the market for long time. Usually these properties are not only properties that the owners have, hence not in rush, hence the overpricing.
The third segment is building land where we find experienced investors that managed to get this segment to the most realistic valuing. The price of building land depends mostly on the location of it and ranges from 500 Euro sqm in Rovinj to around 20 Euro sqm or even less in inland Istria.
One more where foreign buyers are restricted is agricultural land. There is lots of it and it sells for sometimes less than 1 Euro sqm but what do you do with it. It can be viewed as long time investment, very long time. Nice to have so called segment and nothing else for the moment unless it is next to a nice building plot and can form a garden to your luxury villa.
Hope others in Istria would agree with me.
Actually I would like to hear your comments to check if I am on the right track myself as I decided there is still space for investing in some of these segments in Istria.
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Post by rijekafan on Feb 12, 2007 14:47:27 GMT 1
I agree with you about the gilt edged nature of Rovinj but the rental yields are not there so its hard to value the place. I wanted to buy there but Rijeka is my base and I could not exert the control I am used to. I believe ther are undervalued places in Istria but away from the coast. I liked Vodnjan until I discovered they were building a giant gas processing terminal there. As far as Agricultural land goes if one thinks long term there is an interesting path to follow that I thought of but its a longer term strategy and not without risk. You are allowed to build a so called Shepards house of limited size. My idea was to build the Shepards house and apply to extend it later. One could just keep reapplying until someone said yes!!
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Post by mambo on Feb 25, 2007 23:09:33 GMT 1
That simply won't work.
Agricultural land is what it is and the only thing you are allowed to build is a shed for your tools or for some animals. As soon as you start putting something on there which is a bit more than just a place for tools you will run into problems. You will never be able to get a using permission, therefore cannot rent or sell it, makes me wonder what is the point of buidling something like that. If you want to use it for yourself it will probably be no problem as long as you don't make the 'shed' too big. Make sure that you are also growing something and nobody will create any problems for you.
Waiting for agricultural land to be changed into building land can be a long wait. If you make politicians part owner however it might go a lot quicker !
About the prices in Rovinj I am not so sure that they are undervalued, in fact I think they are heavily overvalued and I would not want to pay anything over 1000 euro/m2.
All over Istria we can see that newly build apartments are empty, not getting sold, there is a huge overcapacity in apartments on the rental market and just recently a new project near Porec came on the market offering at 1100 to 1600 euro/m2, marking the real first heavy drop in prices. In the center of Porec some developers are building huge apartment buildings, but I fear it is going to be a devastating loss for them. The first building was finished almost a year ago and is not only not finished, but also completely empty. The second building is on offer for outrageous prices per square meter, with a view on .................the main parking lot ! Good luck finding buyers for that property.
In the inland of Istria you can indeed still find reasonable priced houses, but if you are interested don't show up in your foreign car or speaking a foreign language, the price will double instantly.
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mhctg
New Member
Posts: 7
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Post by mhctg on Mar 15, 2007 21:46:18 GMT 1
the prices are not going down and that is not going to happen. anyone having some money to invest in property in Croatia should do so. Prices in Zagreb are not going down neither. I know that from personal experience, my two apartments in Zagreb worth a lot more than when bought. Prices more than doubled in last 3 or 4 years. And they are still going up. A friend of mine is buying a property in Zagreb, or trying to, as the prices are high, but during the last 3 months they jumped even higher. be quick and buy.
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Post by mambo on Mar 15, 2007 22:11:50 GMT 1
Well, there is now a building project near Baderna, nice apartments, even a communal swimming pool and it is selling for 1179 euro for a square meter. That is a whole lot less than 2500 euro/square meter that they are asking 1 km down the road.
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Post by architect on Apr 3, 2007 11:05:02 GMT 1
I first visited croatia some years ago now and i haven't seen that market 'mature' as I thought it might. It stills seems to be characterized by astronomical asking which often fail to be achieved; in some cases years after a property reached the market.
The only real differences I’ve seen is an increased level of unsold stock and a proliferation of low grade residential development – some which are stunningly awful considering how beautiful much of the natural coast line & traditional architecture is.
I recently sold a stone house for circa 23,000 euros - a competitive figure I believed reflected market conditions. Personally I think business would flourish if there was a reasonable number of good sub 100,000 euro properties, sadly they are often many times that figure & are marketed by stubborn sellers who refuse to compromise on price and I should know I’ve tried to buy from them!
So I was a committed investor who’s been turned off by the whole process so much so that I’m actually selling my other house and yes I’ll be under cutting the local ‘market’!
Is this the consensus?
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Post by londonhack on Apr 3, 2007 18:17:23 GMT 1
I raised this issue re high asking prices last year when a friend and I were looking in rovinj and got mixed responses. Obviously there's a balance between local people being ripped off by relatively rich tourists and vice versa. IN the end though, my friend and I went to italy to buy and found a three story townhouse in Puglia for about a third of the price of a similar property in Rovinj. From my limited house hunting visits I do think the croatians I've met think that northern europeans are loaded and can afford silly money for properties. Some are, of course, but if they're paying Euros 200K plus for a property all but the most stupid would want a higher calibre of places that we saw - thanks to all the property supplements and tv shows over here there's a high awareness of what you can get for your money in places like Spain, Bulgaria, etc Interestingly, I have a friend with a villa in Spain, who says that all her German neighbours are desperate to sell their properties and prices are slumping as their govt has just introduced a tough tax on holiday homes. Does anyone know anything about this? Generally, from what I gather in the UK, renting villas/apartments abroad is so cheap nowadays, it's not worth putting down a bucket of cash in an overseas property.
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Post by firefly on Apr 4, 2007 10:28:18 GMT 1
there's a high awareness of what you can get for your money in places like Spain, Bulgaria, etc
I So, are you trying to say it doesn't matter where in the world you buy as long as it's cheap? What makes Croatia different from Spanish or Bulgarian coast?
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Post by londonhack on Apr 4, 2007 11:17:55 GMT 1
Well to be honest, most brits i know are looking for a place near the sea in a sunny place. And yes, if you're not wealthy, price is a factor. That's why so many of them went to Spain; are investing in Bulgaria, etc. I haven't been to bulgaria but of course Croatia is different to Spain. Spain is more developed, more infrastructure, in the EU and probably a lot easier for most Brits (who generally aren't great at speaking other languages) to live in. Let's turn the question round - are you saying that Croatia is value for money and the higher property prices are justifed? Interested to hear your arguments why.
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