BBC article on living in cro

[totalcroatia]

www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20110726-living-in-croatia/1

interested in your thoughts on a couple of things mentioned

1. While the economic downturn sent many buyers back to tried and true places like France and Italy, the stability of Croatia’s entry into the EU and its seductive charms are turning things around in the property market. “It has been rather quiet for the past couple of years when Croatia went out of focus,” said Cvjetkovic. “But now there are a lot of attractive properties on the market.”
For a two-bedroom apartment in a complex, buyers should be prepared to spend around 250,000 euros, but inland in Istria you can get a villa with a swimming pool for 350,000 euros or less.

how close to reality are those prices?

2. Today, most properties have only one owner only or it is a new build.

cheers Paul

[ray51]

I think you'll find frequent contibutions like this in U.K. media , produced by profuse and verbose individuals who get paid for such , whereas they either don't know very much about places they report on , or have never been there .
Does not matter whether they are commenting on Croatia , Emirates , Goa , Cape Town , Carribean , Greece , Portugal , Brasil , Australia , wherever .
Re-cycling hear-say can be a good source of income , for some .

[Madgolfer]

Given the title "Living in Croatia" the piece seemed to be more about property prices than having any useful info about actually living here.

But hey, every little helps. ;D

[ray51]

Well spotted , mg !
A thinly-disguised advert for an estate agent !
Happens weekly , my wife still naively believes in such articles , as published in Sunday Fail , Sunday Times etc. and then she tells me how great it is in Montenegro , Bulgaria , by the Lake Balaton , in Namibia , what do I know ...next , it might yet be Albania or Azerbeijan or Moldova , got to keep the presses churning and the money coming in , haven't you ?

[ray51]

@ valiant2 :
do you really believe that a "referendum" could achieve anything ?
The Germans , as well as many others , did not allow such a thing in their relative country/ies ( for fears that it would turn out a negative result );
rather , they rushed the decisions through the bodies that matter and now it is all written in steel and concrete ( to the detriment of too many others ) ;
reminds me also of the first "democratic" vote in South Africa , about 1994 ; most voters could not sign their names , being illiterate, so the fingerprints became acceptable instead ; then the " votes " were counted , re-counted and re-arranged for weeks on end , until the "correct" party was officially proclaimed the winners , got into power and got granted powers to take over a lovely country .
The ways of the world !

[upthevilla]

(( “But now there are a lot of attractive properties on the market.”
For a two-bedroom apartment in a complex, buyers should be prepared to spend around 250,000 euros, but inland in Istria you can get a villa with a swimming pool for 350,000 euros or less.))

way out on price on apartments in most areas. Premantura and Rovinj still 2,000 - 3,000 euro a m2 depending on location, furniture, quality.
but the rest of the apartments in Medulin, Peroj, Liznjan,Stinjan, porec and other coastal places are 1,500 - 2,000 euro m2.

A good sized 2 bedroom apartment in medulin with a shared pool, near the beach cost 90,000 - 110,000 euro.

Some builders are very despearte, they started building when the boom was on,by the time they finsihed builing the collapse came, these builders are now selling at 1,200 - 1,500 e m2.

istrian Villas, close ish. Its still possible to find a 3 bedrom villa, with pool, sa view for 250,000, but a lot harder to find then 3 years ago. having said that many of the developers that built 350,000 - 500,000 E villas are getting desperate and will take a lot less, depends on their circumstances and how much they owe the bank.

[tackleberry]

tried to read it but not visible to those in the uk ??

[mambo]

For 250,000 euro you will have a house with a swimming pool on the island of Curacao in the Caribbean, 365 days per year good weather.
Just one problem.............it is a 10 hour flight from Amsterdam, but prices are not bad.

[ray51]

Or a nice house , probably with a pool , in cosmopolitan Cape Town ( or 2 of them , in Johannesburg , if you must ) ;
also 10 hours flying time from Europe , plus a few other hassles ;
the weather is not always perfect , there are seasons , ( which could be a factor , but not a reason normally ) but the steaks and the wine are tops ( and cheap ) !
As are the wild-game parks !

[crojoe]

And whoever is was that commented in the article kind of got their story wrong. Sure, a new development we hope has clean papers (and not built with illegal permits), but to say that most houses today are owned by one owner isn't right, or at least I understand it isn't the "norm". I hear stories all the time on how it takes up to a year to sort who ones a property, then trying to figure out how to buy it or get the relatives to sign off on it.

[Madgolfer]

I hear stories all the time on how it takes up to a year to sort who ones a property, then trying to figure out how to buy it or get the relatives to sign off on it.

I would suggest that 1 year is being optimistic, in reality 2 is probably closer IMO.

Some are just too complicated and expensive to sort out at all.

[mambo]

Many of the old houses stay empty after the elderly owners die. The children cannot figure out what to do with the house. The house is in no shape to be rented and the asking price is usually way too high.
Thus houses sit and deteriorate for many years and even though there may be buyers...........the family is unable to come to terms. Some members are living abroad and good luck trying everyone to agree.

[Madgolfer]

Perhaps there should be some sort of "majority-rule" law or an arbitration system to resolve these issues.