Land Prices Drop, but no one notices

[irac]

If anyone needs to be cheered up today listen to a special (I think it's also on HTV news) report on land prices in Zadar-Sibenik (the regional broadcasting area). It's about 5 minutes long (the snippet) but a full report will be on HR1 tomorrow. The reporter, based in Sibenik, goes out to interview people who are advertising their property (mainly land parcels from what I heard).

The gist of it is thus, after introduction:
Reporter: Your land is for sale since 2006.
Vendor: I know.
R: Can you tell me a little about it.
V: 800m2. (5second pause)
R: Where is it?
V: In Bilice.
R: Can you describe it please?
V: It's 50euros per quadrat.
R: From what I can see it's 2km from the sea.
V: I know.
R: Has it got a building licence?
V: No.
R: Is it in the building zone?
V: No.
R: But you're looking for 50euros per quadrat.
V: According to the Opcine the average price for such land is 8euros per quadrat.
R: I know.
V: So why are you looking for over 5times this?
R: Because many people want to come here to live. Western people, Russians.

The reporter goes on to speak about falling prices for land, giving examples and the full report has an interview with Neda Klaric from Sibenik and Veljko Simunac (Deputy County Chief) discussing how they have seen a decrease in inward investment since 2007, but that this will correct itself.

Apparently they have interviews with people from further inland and up in Zadar. If you want to laugh, have a listen!

[Carol]

It sounds very familiar. Once another agent wanted me to co-operate with her on selling some land. the first thing she wanted was to establish that the buyer would pay her 1% plus PDV of the purchase price (which as it was a huge chunk of land would have fallen into the institutional business category and so would have represented the whole fee i.e. we would do all the work for nothing or maybe even have to pay her!). Then when we got past that, I finally got her to tell me that the land was agricultural land so now the price per square metre she'd quoted was completely in the wrong ball park. So i declined. But she persisted, finally realising that she wasn't getting through to me and resorting to telling my colleague in Croatian that it was next to the sea on Hvar and had beautiful views! (I don't know what has that got to do with anything when you are ploughing a field or picking olives).

Some people are either stupid or think that all foreigners are. After 4 years i've never worked out which is which.

The footnote of the story is that afterwards she pestered me with phone calls always about other pieces of over valued, unlovable properties until finally I switched my mobile off, so she then called my colleague and told him that I was "unprofessional". I can only think that given her behaviour she really has no idea what the word means, or she does not mind being a hypocrite.