Why is it more profitable to buy an apartment in Tuscany than in Belgrade? And why the number of real estate buyers in Serbia is decreasing.

The stabilization and decline on the real estate market continues, while prices continue to slow down their growth, said Ivana Štrbac from the Geodesic Office of Serbia. If there are no major shocks in the market and in the world, a slight correction of real estate prices can be expected next year, i.e. a decrease of a few percent, says Ivana Štrbac, according to RTS.

The number of real estate buyers in Serbia continues to decline. The market has experienced a decline in the volume of transactions for several quarters in a row. Nevertheless, sellers are still holding prices per square meter. Ivana Strbac from the Surveyor's Office noted, speaking on the RTS morning program, that the real estate market continues to''trending towards stabilization and calming down, and prices are increasingly slowing their rise. She also added that residents can get more information about real estate prices on the Geodetic Survey's website in real estate reports and price index reports. Ivana Strbac notes that Serbia is one of the few countries with the most developed method of real estate market tracking and mass appraisal. She points out that the average number of quarterly transactions in 2018 and 2019 was around 25,000-26,000 contracts on a quarterly basis. "That changed after the pandemic and we have a number of contracts that averaged 35,000 contracts on a quarterly basis, and in the fourth quarter of 2022, the number exceeded 37,000," Strbac said, noting that this''s highest point on the chart, according to RTS. There were 29,248 contracts in the third quarter of 2023. "This year, we see the number of contracts on a quarterly basis at around 30,000, which is still well above pre-pandemic levels. You could say that this extremely large and explosive demand in the previous two years has sort of stabilized," emphasizes Strbacz.

But not all countries and all markets are the same. The example of Scotland, where the report for the second quarter of 2023 was released.

When it comes to real estate prices, Strbatz expects a decline of a few percent, not, as the media reports, 20 percent, according to the RTS. "I really don't consider''probably attracts the attention of citizens, but the market always reacts to the supply and demand ratio,' Strbac notes, according to RTS. According to her, what is happening in Belgrade is probably because the demand was so high that demand could not meet that level of supply. "And the market of houses outside the city, for example in Italy, is not the same and cannot be compared to the market of apartments in the capital of one country. Apartments in the center ofMilan cost an average of 10,000 euros per square meter, inRome - 7,000 euros. So houses in the countryside are a separate market in each country," says Strbac. "The cost of houses in SerbianTuscany, in Sumadija, is much lower than the cost of apartments in big cities," concludes Ivana Strbac. (Source:''RTS)