Buying a Condo in Serbia
This is an ongoing series of post as we go through the process of purchasing a condominium in Belgrade.
Owning property is different in Serbia as there is still the struggle of moving from a centrally planned economy to a capitalist private economy. Who owns what and is responsible for what is a bit confusing still. If you are over 50 in Serbia, you probably got your condo from the Yugoslav government because of your work. My father-in-law was an architect for the Air Force and got the condo in the Block for the military. There is less changing hands of property here. Several generations may live in the same apartment and it gets passed down.
We originally looked at older apartments. People do not move and sell in Serbia as often as the US, so it is hard to find a condo from five to ten years old. The older apartments were just not doing it for us, and we soon concluded that we would have to go with new construction. To get the apartment that you want in the location that you want you to have to start purchasing the condo before it is finished. This is a bit scary because throughout the country there are literally hundreds of building projects that were started and then ran out of money and were never finished.
We are lucky, as my wife first graduated from Faculty of Architecture before getting her PhD in Architecture History. So, we have some contacts to help us in the selection and building out of the apartment. We talked to a few lawyers and finally found one we thought we could work with to review the developments papers, to make sure they legally own the land, and that they have a history of completing their work, and their financial resource. We found a couple of apartments that we liked, but the area around was so crowded with traffic. It would take you 10-15 minutes to go 10 blocks in the middle of the day. Then we found it! Not far from the apartment my wife currently owns that we rent. It was going to be the perfect condo, four months away from completion and the last one available in the building.
All the paper work checked out. The contractor responsible for the building site has worked for our friends who have an architecture firm here in Belgrade and so we are ready to put a small amount down to reserve the apartment. This will allow us to make some modifications to the floor plan, taking out a study and including that space to increase the size of the kitchen and open it up to the living room. We will have one very long balcony, a requirement for us, and two smaller ones all looking in different directions.
In a coming post I will tell you more about the apartment itself and some of the quirks of new construction in Serbia; as well as, the part of town where we will be living. Giving you a blow by blow account of new home ownership here in Serbia.
