Rising real estate prices in Montenegro: foreigners are increasingly becoming buyers.

Real estate prices in Montenegro are rising, and there are fewer and fewer Russians and Ukrainians, and more and more Turks, Germans, French and Poles.

According to the latest data from Monstat, in September last year the average price per square meter in new buildings in Montenegro was 1647 euros, which is 300 euros higher than at the beginning of 2023.

"There is a great danger that we will very soon become strangers in our own country, because due to the geopolitical situation and inflation, prices are rising and our people cannot afford to buyreal estate. This is mostly done by foreigners. As for foreigners, apart from the ones we know about, Russians, Turks, Ukrainians, Germans, French and Poles are becoming more and more," says Nemanja Pavicevic, a journalist of the real estate portal RTCG.

He believes that one cannot count on hope for falling prices. "How it will be in the future, no one knows, but as long as inflation lasts, at least I think so, and economic regularities are like that, prices will rise," Pavicevic believes.

He believes that the state should have thought about its citizens and regulated this area differently. "Thus, if we already have a flood of foreigners, and if prices are rising, we all cannot pay a turnover tax of 3 percent of the value of the sales contract. Perhaps they needed to set 50, 80 or 100 percent to protect our people in some way," Pavicevic believes.

He fears that the move cannot be restored in hindsight and that it is too late. "It seems to me that Montenegro is disappearing before the invasion of big capital," Pavicevic emphasizes.

The cheapest apartment today is more expensive than the average price 10 years ago

The executive director of real estateagency TipTop Dragana Kovacevic-Nikcevic says for the RTCG portal that the average price of an apartment in Podgorica is 1800 euros per square meter.

"The most expensive apartment in our offer is priced at 2,400 euros per square meter, while the cheapest one costs 1,450 euros.

According to Monstat, there are 365,139 apartments for 632,083 residents in 2023. This is about 50,000 more apartments than the last census in 2011 (316,083). Then there were about 7,000 fewer inhabitants and the average cost per square meter became 1307 euros.

She explains that in the last three or four months the number of clients from Russia and Ukraine has decreased, while the most frequent contacts are Turkish citizens, mainly because of renting apartments and commercial premises. She doesn't forecast prices to fall, but not to rise either. "We believe that prices will stabilize after the New Year, because last year prices did increase a lot and are already quite high," says Kovačević-Ničević.

As for apartment rental prices per month, they have almost doubled. "Studios cost from 200 to 400 euros, one-bedroom apartments from 400 to 700 euros, and two-bedroom apartments from 600 to 1000 euros a month. The cheapest apartment in our agency costs 200 euros and it is a studio in the basement, while the most expensive luxury apartments cost from 1,000 euros and above," says the director of TipTop.