When it comes to selling Croatian property to people who hold foreign passports, the record for the country was 2019.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of June, 2020, foreigners love the Croatian capital of Zagreb the most when it comes to buying apartments, but if they want a house, they choose the coast. Still, some locations were more sought after last year than others.
“The first choice were houses in Vir, then those in Vodice and Porec,” Ivana Beljan, a spokeswoman for Oglasnik za nekretnine, told Dnevnik.hr
When it comes to Croatian property to people with foreign passports, the record for Croatia was 2019.
”They acquire somewhere around five to seven thousand properties a year. 2019 was the year when we had almost the biggest amount of acquisition, it was somewhere around seven thousand,” said Dubravko Ranilovic, president of the Real Estate Association at the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK). It is rare, he says, for a foreigner to decide to buy real estate in Slavonia, a part of Eastern Croatia which is regularly overlooked on an array of fronts.
Last year, real estate along the Croatian coastline was the subject of interest mostly for Germans and Swiss citizens, but neighbouring Slovenians still own the most real estate on Croatian soil. They are followed by Germans, Austrians, Croatia’s other neighbours from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Italy, and then Slovaks.
The island of Vir has been a hit among foreigners for years, as the latest figures show. In the first four months of this year, as many as 60 building permits were issued for that island, and there are currently 159 open construction sites there.
It’s worth mentioning that this island was well known for illegal construction for some time, but from year to year it continues to break the records when it comes to tourist numbers. Even during the coronavirus pandemic, the island of Vir still somehow managed to boast decent tourist numbers.
How the ”curve” when it comes to foreigners buying Croatian property will look this year also depends on the epidemiological picture. So far, it is known that the coronavirus pandemic has “frozen” the real estate market.
“Sellers don’t dare to go out too much or give in to prices, and buyers are waiting for a better opportunity,” says Ranilovic.
The first segment in which prices could fall, according to those in the profession, could be apartments. “Because the assumption is that property owners who are still hoping for some income from tourism will be left without that income and will be forced to get rid of real estate and thus get rid of their credit debts,” explained real estate agent Julijo Klarin.
As much as 62 percent of tourist accommodation in the Republic of Croatia consists of beds in apartments. Many of them are still very much empty.
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