Many of us will have heard all about the great spats that big rap stars typically have with other huge rap stars, like Eminem and his pure loathing for Ja Rule, as it sells records. But we don’t frequently see similar behavior in the foreign property world, not only because it would improbable result in an agent selling more property, rather more likely the opposite would be true . But in this month’s OPP we have come close to it, at least in the level of enthusiasm being poured into the debate — a little bit of excitement anyway.
Fundamentally Montenegro property agents have taken up arms over claims in the Russian press that Russians own 40 percent of property in Montenegro, and especially claims in Croatian publication Slobodna Dalmacija exclaiming that some towns are 100% Russian-owned. Also, Croatia real estate is very much in demand among Russians.
Andrea Marston, former partner of agency Montenegro Prospects, told OPP totally that she feels the claims are “ludicrous”, and that Montenegro is far more than simply “Moscow-on-Sea”.
Marston said : “I find the claim that 40 percent of property owners are Russian pretty ludicrous. You only have to walk around to understand that isn’t true.”
Marston announced that both Croatia and Montenegro were well-liked by Brits and Europeans in 2007 and when Russians started buying then they preferred Montengro because “unlike Croatia, they did not need visas to go to, could buy real estate with no need to set up a company and there were historical cultural ties”. So now, when the majority of the buyers are Russian Montengro is buoyed by their activity while Croatia “has practically gone into hibernation for some years now”.
Marston further said that she believed it rather more likely that Russian’s were responsible for 40 percent of sales in 2010-11, although not 40 percent of the nations entire housing stock. To be the voice of mediation, perhaps they are both right to an extent.
Of course, we’d need a Montengro census report to know the exact %s of Russian owners , however , we all know that Russian purchasers are in the millions and that Montenegro is hip with Russian buyers.
Montengro is also the littlest country in the EU with a total population of just 631,400 according to Google public information thru the World Bank. This is compared against a population of over 7 million in London. London has areas that are controlled by one race or another, so one has to ask how many Russians it would take to have Montenegro properties before they began to become dominant?
But at the same time, how much is it significant? Look at Spain, in the boom many resorts were heavily controlled by English consumers, but we did not have Spanish agents on the box demonstrating that Brits weren’t dominant. Perhaps because the majority of the purchasers were still UK so it was more of a selling point than a negative, so perhaps Marston has missed a trick here.
Now, Russian customers are a dominant force in the world of foreign property, so wherever we consider buying they will likely be there in force. However , if this were to become a reason not to buy for other nationalities then their ascendancy would never end nor even be diluted.
But this will not happen. On my last UK vacation I saw more Asians than I have in one place in my life but it didn’t matter at all, it made not one single difference to anything. In fact , I didn’t even realise I had noticed this till I was trying to think of a real example of internationalisation at play. I fail to see how too many Russian buyers could put anyone off buying in Montenegro. We should hope nobody goes for my throat for saying so as reported tagza.com.
Tags: travel, destination, Real Estate
