Buying A Condo In Serbia Part II
Well we have done it. We signed the contract and made the first payment on the new condo and could not be more excited. We have our friends working on the plans for the build out of the kitchen and the cabinets and closets in the rest of the house and any modifications to the bathrooms we will have completed before we move in sometime probably in August.
We had a few problems with the contract, as I started asking some questions while being read the contract by the notary. Not knowing that she had the power to control the proceedings and since I had questions stopped the whole process and we had to wait a week for her to rewrite parts of the contract and get a translator in to read me the parts in English. It is a new concept that you own property as a married couple in shared ownership. It seems that here it is that one party own 50% of the condo and the other part owns the other 50%. I am not exactly sure how that plays out, but I have heard of some weird situations especially with inheriting part of a condo from one of your parents. In one example a stepson lives with his stepmother after inheriting 50% from his father and they hate each other. Anyway, that all got worked out for us and we finally did sign.
They have knocked out the wall making the kitchen larger and incorporating the study into the kitchen and knocked out the wall from the kitchen to the living room where the bar will be built. We spent an afternoon going over more of the details planning the various rooms and the layout of the kitchen which is very exciting. I never knew how much fun it could be to plan a kitchen. My one disappointment as that there are almost no gas stoves in Serbia, so we must go with electric.
So next up is the surfaces and actual specifications. We have given them our wish list for the features we wanted, like full extensions pull out shelves rather than just flat shelves in the cabinets, a pot filler over the sink, a hook up for our converter to use the US appliances we have, an appliance garage on the counter to hide the blender and food process and mixer when not in use, as well as, many others. We will see how much we can get in the days to come.
Another Balcony view
Up next our weekend on the country.