FAQ

What, do you suppose, is the question guests ask us more often than any other? In Pick o’ the Pops style, I’ll give you the runners-up first, with answers attached so my twos of readers may wonder no longer.

In third place, it’s the rather obvious “What made you choose Montenegro?”

Short version: 2004, bought a place in Croatia, did it up, rented it out, started learning the lingo. 2005, went travelling. 2006 returned and never settled again. 2008, decided to change our lives, sold London terraced house, went searching for a taste of Africa somewhere in Europe, hoping to set up a holiday business of some sort. Came across Lake Skadar in the first week of a mooted 3 month trawl through central-eastern Europe’s beauty spots, and after being blown away by its beauty, decided that was that.

In second place, it’s “What will you do about the kids’ education?”

Short version: In a radical turn of events, we shall be sending them to school.

The bronze medalist is the first thing that most people ask. The silver medalist follows once our guests have gotten to know us a bit better, usually a few days later. The third question however – and the winner of my rhetorical quiz – is the following, usually asked right near the end of the holiday:

“So...if you don’t mind my asking...how much did you pay for the villa?”

This is usually where some obfuscation occurs. We decided early in our venture that we would never tell anyone what the house and its renovations costs us. We just didn't want to provoke conversations about a) how we managed it so cheaply or b) why we paid so much. We've had both reactions coming from the same set of figures, by the way, on the rare occasions when we have revealed anything. It’s natural that others see what we've done here and start thinking to themselves whether they might be able to do something similar – here or elsewhere. It’s only human. It’s how we ourselves got started (nods to Penny & Duncan and Craig and Xania due at this point). Our numerophobia then leads to the inevitable part-two of the above poser:

“How much would other property cost here, then?”

Now that, my friends, is a question worth answering. Montenegro is a beautiful but cheap country to holiday in. Away from the coast, might it also be a good value place to find a lovely stone house/ruin such as we did? Our standard answer to this one has always been that’s it’s impossible to say as the only foreigners we know who have bought in this region are...well...us - and with no-one really buying the prices here can vary wildly depending on the vendors’ relationship with reality. Curiosity got the better of me last night and for the first time in five years I put the words “Virpazar real estate” into Google. Five years ago such a search term would have yielded bugger all, so progress has been made – within half an hour I found around 30 real estate offers of varying kinds all situated around Lake Skadar and its environs.

It is therefore time to play The Price is Wrong! See if you can guess the actual asking prices for the following five properties, all of which can be found on-line.

120sqm, 1000sqm land, 3 beds, no lake view

a) €45,000

b) €90,000

c) €200,000

200sqm, 6500sqm land, no lake view, unfinished inside

a) €30,000

b) €75,000

c) €150,000

90sqm, land unspecified, no lake view, condition unknown (but guessable)

a) €25,000

b) €60,000

c) €290,000

320sqm with 150sqm glazed area for indoor pool, 220sqm garden, 30m from lakeside

a) €180,000

b) €380,000

c) €1,500,000

20,000sqm estate with 5000 vines, 100 olive trees and one 100sqm 2-bed house with cellar

a) €650,000

b) €950,000

c) €2,600,000

If you answered mostly “a”s, congratulations. You are probably a wise judge of a property’s worth – good luck convincing the owners that they are all nuts. If you answered mostly “b”s there’s a strong chance you have no idea whatsoever what you’re doing and should really stay away from the property market altogether. If you answered mostly “c”s, Добро пожаловать, друзья, у нас есть некоторые замечательные сделки для вас!

Yep, the real asking prices are all “c”s.

Have you stopped laughing yet (especially at no:4)?

If the first three rules of buying property in the west are location, location and location, the first three rules of selling here in inland Montenegro are “ask for more than your neighbour” – I shall call it Monty’s Law. Monty’s Law adheres to the following formula: if house X sells for €x, and Y is twice the size of X but in a much worse location with no view, built out of breeze blocks and in a state of repair a tramp would decline, the price naturally becomes €2x. Sometimes, properties are “owned” by several members of the same family, all of whom have to agree to sell and all of whom have to agree on their share. If they all decide there’s really no sense selling for less than, say €20,000pp, and there are six of them, then suddenly your crappy 1970s built 2-bed bungalow becomes “worth” €120,000. And no-one, not even a mental Russian, is going to pay that. So nothing sells. And the next guy to put his house on the market sees this price and applies Monty’s Law. Not a month goes by during summer where a local doesn’t ask us to value and then market their house to other foreigners (despite this not really being what we do here). And most of the time, their asking prices are so high it’s jolly hard to keep a straight face.

Now on the coast, where there has long been a competitive property market, it’s easy to compare, contrast and price up because stuff sells there all the time. Around Lake Skadar, however, there is no market. Which came first, the lack of sales or the crazy prices? Who knows. All I can tell you is that if you want to invest in this area, it pays to take your time. There are plenty of beautiful old stone houses out here needing a bit of TLC (ok, a lot of TLC), but you need to know where to look, and you need to be patient - as well as persistent. These are the sorts of places that often have multiple ownership issues to sort out, but if you're brave enough to take that challenge on there are bargains out there, sold by vendors who have accepted real-world economics. We decided to build on our own land rather than buy another place in the area simply because for us, financially, it’s a no-contest, at least for the moment. We keep adding landscaping ideas to the project, and adding stuff tends to have a detrimental affect on the budget...!

So what has been happening on the build then?

Excavation, that’s what. After four days of rain we got not one, but two diggers on site, narrowly missing electrical cables and water pipes as they clear the way for what promises to be an awful lot of concrete.

We're crossing our fingers that we can get the foundations finished before it starts raining again. And we're hoping that for now we're all out of fancy landscaping ideas so that we still have an outside chance of moving into it come April...

Where's the smiley for "yikes"?