Montenegro is one of my main bases.

Why?

I get to live in Europe without the main disadvantages of the European Union (high taxes, compliance, and paperwork). I just do my own thing and am left in peace. Coming back to such a base, in between trips, is very pleasant.

And as a fan of spearfishing and hiking, Montenegro has a lot to offer.

It has also been a great real estate investment. Montenegro’s popularity has surged as people have been looking for low-tax safe havens to invest their money in.

Tivat is a particular hotspot. It’s where I bought my first Montenegro property in 2016. It has a world famous marina with super-yachts, an international airport, and multiple international schools. People from all over the world gather there to benefit from Mediterranean climate and low taxes.

In this video with my realtor Peter Square Meter we gave an overview of sub €250,000 properties. We looked at three properties and analyzed the pros and cons of each. One of them had pretty attractive numbers.

If you are interested in Montenegro real estate, make sure to read the full Montenegro real estate market report that I wrote. It is the most thorough report you’ll find online.

The investment boom is set to continue

The developer of the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai and a partner have committed to investing around €35 billion in Southern Montenegro. There are currently local protests against this project, so nothing is guaranteed, but if it were to go ahead there would be a boom like no other in that part of Montenegro.

In any case it demonstrates how much FDI is flowing into Montenegro, as does this map below.

So feel free to:
– Read the Montenegro real estate report
– Get in touch with Peter Square Meter
– Read on how to get residency in Montenegro

To a World of Opportunities,

The Wandering Investor.

Articles on Montenegro:

Available services in Montenegro:

If you want to read more such articles on other real estate markets in the world, go to the bottom of my International Real Estate Services page.

Subscribe to the PRIVATE LIST below to not miss out on future investment posts, and follow me on InstagramXLinkedInTelegram, YoutubeFacebook, and Rumble.

My favourite brokerage to invest in international stocks is IB. To find out more about this low-fee option with access to plenty of markets, click here.

If you want to discuss your internationalization and diversification plans, book a consulting session or send me an email.

Transcript of “Investment and lifestyle real estate in Tivat, Montenegro – a top European low-tax safe haven”

LADISLAS MAURICE: Hello, everyone. Ladislas Maurice of The Wandering Investor. Today, we are in beautiful Tivat, in Montenegro, in the midst of winter. Peter Square Meter, how are you?

PETER: I’m good, I’m good. And actually, finally, people can see what my hair looks like.

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs]

PETER: Because I only have my cap on. But I came on my motorbike today, at your request. God help us later on.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, at my request, we were chatting yesterday, and then he showed me his new toy. I said, “Yeah, come on your motorbike. We’re going to go for a ride.”

PETER: The bigger the boy, the bigger the toy.

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs] Today, we’re going to have a look at three different apartments here in Tivat that are all below €250,000. They’re very different from each other. We’ll be looking at the pros and cons of each, because that’s often a request you get from some of your clients.

PETER: It is, we get a lot of requests, some people are looking for something to use for themselves or for an investment. And quite often, the investment side of it can be different to what people are looking for their own use. People, if it’s for their own use, they want to have beautiful views in the balcony and so on and so forth. If for investment, quite often, it could be more about the location than, let’s say, the esthetic, sometimes.

Winter in Montenegro

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. All right, fantastic. We’ll go there, and we’ll go to all the apartments and do approximate numbers. Before we go there, can you tell us a little bit about winter in Montenegro? Because, I mean, this is quite nice, right?

PETER: Well, it’s still officially winter. Here we are. Just one thing that’s kind of interesting about Montenegro, you have 270 days of sunshine, so that leaves you with about three months of cloudy, rainy weather. We’re in winter now. This is a typical day for winter. It’s about 16 degrees now, it’s the morning. There’s different things to do. Obviously, people kind of enjoy the outdoor life in Montenegro, so obvious thing is sailing and fishing, maybe. But also, you have the winter sports.

You’ve got Kolašin. Kolašin is quite an interesting up-and-coming place. We bought in Kolašin 15, 16, years ago. I suppose the point of that is, I don’t know what the hockey phrase is, but something like going to where the puck is going to go to. We bought realizing that Kolašin was a very interesting place. A lot of development there. Most of the money that was invested in Montenegro for the CBI, Citizenship by Investment, went into Kolašin, about 75% of it. As a result, you’ve got about eight 5-star hotels up there. The ski kilometers are increasing. Around about now you’ve got about 45 kilometers of ski runs, which will increase to, I think, around about 120 kilometers of ski runs. I know they’ll be connecting different mountains together.

Again, kind of interesting if you like the outdoor life. I mean, I mentioned I got a motorbike. I want to do enduro bike riding and touring. Montenegro is quite famous for its TET, which is trans-European trail. But if you like hiking, or horseback riding, or 4-by-4 excursions, there’s a lot going on. I think one of the most interesting things about Montenegro is there’s a lot going on in a very kind of a small area. It’s very diverse.

Skiing in Montenegro

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, so lots going on, fairly affordable, low taxes, easy to get residency in. With the whole ski situation, it looks great on paper. And when there is snow, it’s amazing. The problem is there isn’t always snow.

PETER: You’re right, yeah, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: The season is quite short. Some years there is no season, which is quite terrible for the region, but when there is snow, it’s really nice and quite affordable as well to go skiing. And then again, if you can’t ski in Montenegro, you can go skiing in Bosnia, you can go skiing in Serbia. There are higher mountains there, so there’s a lot here in the Balkans when it comes to skiing, or even Bulgaria.

PETER: I think the interesting thing about a place like Kolašin is it’s not just about the kind of winter things. I know we’re kind of theming this around what you do in the winter here, but the interesting thing about the mountain resorts, let’s call them, is a lot of the time people, spring, summer, and autumn, they love those places for hiking or mountain bike riding, and so on and so forth, so it doesn’t really detract from the place.

It’s interesting because you have another ski resort in Montenegro called Žabljak, which is slightly higher, more guaranteed snow. But actually, all the emphasis has gone on to Kolašin because that’s where all the investments gone. And also, it’s close proximity to Podgorica. And now they have the first part of the motorway, which goes from Bar to Belgrade, the first part of the very expensive Chinese-built motorway goes from Podgorica to Kolašin.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Essentially, the ski slopes are approximately two hours away from here, roughly, two-and-a-half?

PETER: Yeah, two, two-and-a-half hours. Yeah, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: You can go from this, take the car or the bike, two-and-a-half hours away, you’re on a ski slope. This is really the sort of lifestyle that a lot of people are looking for, especially combined with low taxes. Cool, fantastic. Peter, let’s go check out these apartments.

PETER: Let’s go. Should we get on the bike?

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, let’s do it.

PETER: [laughs] God help you.

House tour in Tivat, Montenegro

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs] All right. Cool. Here we are. It’s this building right here. And before we go into the numbers, I think it’s important to elaborate a little bit on architecture in Montenegro. The most premium is typically the old stone houses, etc. They get renovated. That’s what people really want. Those are really expensive per square meter. Then you have all the nice new modern buildings. And then if you want a good deal from a square meter point of view, then you just go for older buildings from the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, like this one, that are architecturally not particularly pleasing, but that’s where you get your best bang for buck, and in many cases as well, the best rental yields.

PETER: Yeah, I think at the end of the day, you’re going to be inside the property rather than outside it, so you’re not looking at the architecture all the time anyway.

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs] That’s a good one, Peter Square Meter.

PETER: Yeah. It’s actually so once you’re in there, I think the great thing about this, actually, for Airbnb, is fantastic. You’ll see, let’s say, the money shots from the balcony. The view is phenomenal over Porto Montenegro.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Let’s go there and do some rough numbers.

PETER: Absolutely.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right.

PETER: Let’s go. Here we are. This one’s two bedrooms.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, so older furniture. I guess the furniture is included?

PETER: Furniture is included. What you see is what you get.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, okay. Typically, there’s not much of a market for secondary market furniture here in Montenegro, so when people sell apartments, they just sell the furniture with it. This is quite typical. Beautiful.

PETER: This apartment, sixteen-something square meters. It’s €185,000, so it makes it round about €3,000 a square meter. For this location, especially this view, is actually really good value.

Parking in Montenegro

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. I’d say the biggest issue is not necessarily the architecture, it is rather the lack of allocated parking. There is some parking here. We can see the cars parked. We’re in winter, and cars are already kind of struggling to find a spot. In summer, this would be problematic. People, typically, when they come to buy real estate in Montenegro, they do it in autumn, in winter, and spring, and in summer, they’re just discovering the place, or they’re just spending their holidays here. But parking is a major issue.

PETER: Parking is a big issue everywhere in Montenegro, so it’s really, really good that it does have parking. Yes, it is a bit problematic. There might be people here who park there that shouldn’t be. Obviously, in the summer, then they can be told to move out the way. But it does have kind of the parking. It’s not allocated, but it’s parking in that area.

LADISLAS MAURICE: It’s parking for the houses here, but there’s not enough parking, so it’s on a first come first served basis. I’d say this is the biggest issue.

Rental prices in Tivat, Montenegro

LADISLAS MAURICE: Let’s say, we were to rent this out on the long-term market, as is, without renovating the bathroom, which needs a bit of a renovation, and changing the furniture, as is, how much could investors get?

PETER: Long-term rental prices have softened a bit, but even so, I’d say the prices now would be €750, €800 a month.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. You’re looking at a gross rental yield of about 4.5%, 5%, generally speaking, for an apartment like this. Net, obviously, less after management and expenses. But yeah, you’re not going to get rich doing long-term rentals here. This would be more of a play for the short-term market.

PETER: Yeah, the short-term rental, I would say, in the summer months, you’re going to get €120, €150 per night for a place like this. You can see, in the bedrooms, it can sleep five. If you make the sofa a sofa bed, you can sleep up to seven. And when you’re showing people this view, and the interior is not too bad, actually, then I think it’s an easy renter. Tivat is extremely popular because it’s a great location, and because of Porto Montenegro and things.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. It’s a bit of a hill to go to the beach, but I mean, Tivat has a lot of hills, so people just accept that.

PETER: Hence the views.

Apartment tour near Porto Montenegro

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, hence the views. Yeah, true. Fantastic. Now we’re going to go check out number two, which is right next to Porto Montenegro, right?

PETER: Exactly. Let’s go then.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, let’s go.

PETER: All right, here we are. We’ve actually got two apartments at the moment.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, so I think let’s discuss Montenegrin safety features.

PETER: [laughs] Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: This here is quite special, all right. People like to drink here. Imagine you’re a guest. You leave the apartment, you say, “Thank you.” And then you just, I mean, this is just–

PETER: The first step is always a doozy.

LADISLAS MAURICE: This is just unthinkable. And this building is, what, 25, 30 years old?

PETER: I would say so, yeah. Probably 80s, actually, might be 40 years old.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. And no one ever thought of adding a hand rail here. Like, this has been like this for four decades, people have been comfortable with this. This, [laughs] welcome to Montenegro. Yeah, if I were to buy this, I’d definitely add a handrail.

PETER: Sure.

LADISLAS MAURICE: If you had an Airbnb here, and your guests fell, you would not have to worry about lawsuits. Like, what would happen? Let’s say, I’m a guest, I’m here, I fall, I sue, I go to the police, what would happen?

PETER: I think it’s debatable, but if it was me, I’d probably just put a handrail up there anyway, just in case there would be a problem.

LADISLAS MAURICE: I don’t think the police would even do anything about–

PETER: They may not. They may just think the people are idiots.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. It’s like you should have watched your step. [laughs]

PETER: Yeah, you shouldn’t have fallen, yeah. [laughs]

LADISLAS MAURICE: This is not America.

PETER: Yeah, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Tell us about the location, because this is the key selling point of this apartment.

PETER: As you know, it’s all about location, location, location. That, in spades, is Porto Montenegro. This is as close to Porto Montenegro as you can possibly get, it’s about 100 meters away. And so, this is location, location, location, but half the price of Porto Montenegro, but you have the same appeal. And it’s great because you have these amazing outlooks with the football pitch, the park, you’ve got Porto Montenegro and Pine over there.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right. This apartment that we’ll see is €4,000 a square meter, and Porto Montenegro, literally, 30-second walk away, is how much per square meter?

PETER: Average now €8,000, but the new release that they’re going to have will be €18,000 to €25,000 per square meter, which is basically Central London prices. They have reservations for 10 already.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool, so between €8,000 and €20,000 a square meter right here. And this is four. Obviously, comes without the amenities and without handrails. [laughs] And then tell us about the park here.

PETER: Yeah, this is just the town park. You have the park, you’ve got tennis courts over there, football pitch over there. It’s really nice, it’s just very peaceful, tranquil area.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Let’s go check it out.

PETER: Okay, so here we are. It’s this apartment. There’s actually two. This one’s a mirror image of the one next door that we entered in. As you see, it’s just been recently refurbished, so you have this kind of flooring throughout, 64 square meters, two bedrooms, one bathroom. Let’s go out. You’ve got lovely views over here of the center. This is really you’ve got the open-air theater just here. Then there’s Pine, which is a really lovely space to see. As you can see the sea is just over there.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. You said €250,000 for this?

PETER: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right. What about parking, what’s the situation?

PETER: Parking, you have parking directly in front of the building. Again, just first come, first served, but there’s plenty of parking, I think, for all the places.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. I think parking is less of an issue here. Two things. One, there is more space because there’s just more parking spots. And two, from a rental point of view, people who rent right downtown in Tivat, like here, often you have people that just fly in and don’t actually have a car and don’t need a car.

PETER: Yeah. They want a location like this because they don’t want a car and they just want to walk around, want to spend their evenings in Porto.

LADISLAS MAURICE: The other one, the car is more needed, and parking is more of an issue. There’s a lot more friction in that other apartment. All right, so this is the first bath, bedroom, cool balcony here as well, and second bedroom.

Investment considerations in Tivat, Montenegro

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, comparing this apartment to the one we saw before, this is about €4,000 a square meter, the other one was €3,000 a square meter, I think this one is a much better investment for a few reasons. Sure, it’s about 33% more expensive per square meter, but one, there’s a renovation that’s been done, a full renovation. The other one was a bit old. And renovations now, if you do a full gut job, how much are we looking at per square meter?

PETER: €1,000 a square meter.

LADISLAS MAURICE: €1,000 per square meter, yeah, for a full gut job, that’s the price now. Already we’re seeing kind of the return in the renovation, the value. And then the location is a lot better. Though there isn’t an actual sea view, you’re literally, I mean, this is Porto Montenegro, like we said, €8,000 to €20,000 a square meter. And then the sort of crowd that you attract in an apartment like this is people who want to be near Porto Montenegro. They just happen to live here, but they’ll just spend their whole time in Porto Montenegro. They just can’t afford Porto Montenegro, but they’ll be hunting for husbands, or doing their thing–

PETER: [laughs] Yeah, or wives.

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs] or wives, they’ll just be there, and then renting here. And they feel they’re there, almost there, not quite, but almost there. And then the parking situation is less problematic, because so many people come, fly in, don’t need a car. And here, you don’t need a car. The other side, I mean, you don’t need a car, but you’ll be feeling when you go up and down that–

PETER: I would definitely have a car there. If nothing else, you need to have an electric bicycle or something like that. Because that hill is quite a walk up that hill.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, it is. And then the parking was an issue. There wasn’t that much parking. Here, there’s more parking. I mean, there’s literally just a paid parking here, which is not too expensive.

PETER: And at the moment, it’s €0.50 an hour.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. As a rental, what do you think it would do on the long-term market?

PETER: Long-term rental, I would say, on a good day, €2,000 a month, on a bad day, €1,500 a month. I think €1,500 a month would be quite doable here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: €1,500 a month?

PETER: Yeah, for this location, for sure. You get nice furniture and things like that, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay.

PETER: I mean, the location is very special. I think the kind of person who’s going to take this is going to be a consultant abroad. Their company is going to be paying the rent, most likely. They probably have an allocation of €1,500, €2,000 a month anyway, which the company is going to pay in expenses. I don’t think it’s a far stretch to say that that’d be the rate here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, I would not go for cheap furniture here. I would put actually nice furniture. I would make it a nice rental. I would not cheap out on the furnishing here. I’d go in with a big furniture budget. €1,500, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s impossible.

PETER: No, I think that’s just kind of the market rate for something like this. We’re renting out things like this, and this is kind of size for those kind of prices.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. In any case, there we were looking at 4% to 5% gross yield. Here, I don’t know by how much more it’ll be, but it’s definitely more in this apartment than the other one.

PETER: I would suspect if you do the figures, you’re looking maybe 7%, 8%, even up to 10% gross yield.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Before we go on to the next apartment, I wrote a whole article on the real estate market here in Montenegro, the areas that are interesting, the areas you should avoid, some mistakes that people make that you should be aware of. There’s a link below. The next apartment is very different. It’s more of a resort, right?

PETER: Yeah, it’s a resort actually. It’s kind of set up almost as a part hotel. The developers kind of sold the apartments, and the owners of those apartments can actually put into the hotel pool. Big pool, got a gym, it’s even got a conference center. So actually, from this year, you’ll be able to get much longer kind of occupancy. Instead of just being summer, then it’s kind of going to be all year round.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, we’re going to go check it out. The first one was cheap and used. This one is location, location, location, and the other one is amenities.

PETER: Absolutely. Let’s go.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, let’s go.

Apartment and amenities tour in Tivat resort

PETER: Keyless entry. What do you think?

LADISLAS MAURICE: Nice. Yeah, nice and modern. Tell us a bit about the resort, because it’s not really a thing in Montenegro, resorts with nice amenities. It’s a very recent phenomenon, right?

PETER: No, this is an established Turkish developer. They’ve got four five-star hotels in Turkey. This is a four-star development. And as you can see, everything’s beautifully finished off. You’ve got sort of floor to ceiling wardrobes there. Great amenities here. As you can see, we’ve got these fantastic views here, beautiful views over the Tivat Bay, Sveti Marko Island, and Luštica peninsula.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And the airport right here, which is kind of cool.

PETER: Airport is right in front of you, but you don’t suffer from the noise. Bizarrely enough, the planes fly straight over Porto Montenegro and then bank left. Yeah, so great facilities, massive pool, beautiful restaurant directly above us, with awesome views. There’s a gym downstairs, a little kind of Pilates studio, a Conference Center, which is really great for the kind of all year-round rentals.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right. Price point?

PETER: €183,500 for a 47 or 49 square meter one-bedroom.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, so about €3,500?

PETER: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: We saw an apartment for €3,000, now one for €3,500, one for €4,000.

PETER: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. This one, I would say, is for rentals, my issue with this is that you really need a car.

PETER: Absolutely, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: If you do not have a car here, you will be miserable. And if you manage to rent it out on Airbnb or whatever, because people like the pool, and you tell them that you’re close to town, they’ll book it, it’s their first time in Montenegro. And then you’ll just get a bad review, because there’s nothing around.

PETER: Yeah, but you know what? Let me push back a little bit on that. Everyone coming to a place like this will rent a car. They want to come to Montenegro. They want to discover the place. They want to have a nice base. And for some people, this is like an ideal location for them, because they want a little retreat. They’re going to come here, they’re going to have drinks by the pool, they’re going to hang out, and then this is going to be their base, but when they go for trips to Luštica, or Budva, or Herceg Novi, or Kotor, or so on.

LADISLAS MAURICE: You said they recently added this conference room to try to get year-round bookings?

PETER: Yeah, it was always part of the plan. The idea is that they get all year-round bookings. It’s set up and run like a hotel. They’re really kind of not aggressive, but they’re really kind of pushing on the bookings and things. You can actually put it in the pool of rental properties, which is quite good. They’ll take quite a chunk out of the rent. I think it’s 50%.

LADISLAS MAURICE: 50%?

PETER: However, they get higher prices, higher occupancy, and so on and so forth, so it’s not so bad. Actually, they’ll take it from a set period, let’s say, from, I think, from April to September. You can also rent it yourself. You’re not obliged to give it to them, and you can just put it on Airbnb, organize your own cleaning and so on.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, I was checking on booking.com, right now for early March, we’re looking at €100 a night for an apartment like this.

PETER: Or something like this, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: I’m not even going to try to guess what the returns are on this. I don’t know.

PETER: Let me hazard a guess. I think, in summer nights, you’re going to be getting maybe €150 a night, or something like this. I think that’s quite a reasonable thing. I’m quite happy paying sort of €150 maybe up to €200 a night, like, July and August for it’s a four-star hotel with lots of facilities. And so, yeah, you’re going to have good occupancy. And especially you can make a decision if you want to have the convenience of actually using the apartment when you want to use it, or just giving it to the management and then letting them kind of run with it.

Investment versus lifestyle properties in Montenegro

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, from a lifestyle and then Airbnb the rest of the year situation, this is really nice. From a pure investment point of view, I think property number two is actually quite good. I wouldn’t even just say it’s better than the others. I would say property number two, right next to Porto Montenegro, is a good investment. It’s something I would consider myself.

PETER: You know what my experience is, is that people come to Montenegro, they come to me and then say, “Look, I’m looking for an investment property.” And I’d say, “Okay, well, let me show you the ones which have the best in return on your investment. Property number two, is that property. Fantastic investment, great location, and so on and so forth.” Then they go, “You know what, I’m thinking something maybe one or two bedrooms, and bathrooms, with a balcony and a sea view.” I said, “Oh, you want what everybody else wants.”

And so, are you investing in yourself, or is it just an investment property? And if you’re investing in yourself, then that’s fine as well. And then you can actually rent it out, put it, and then basically, we’ll just cover the cost. Whatever you get in rent will cover the kind of all the costs, your management fees, and so on and so forth, probably even cover a 50% mortgage on the place if you raised finances back home or something for it. But then you’re actually investing more in yourself than you are, like, for purely return on investment.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, people just need to be very clear with their objectives, because it’s just easy to come here, like you say, say, “Hey, I want something that’s I want to spend time in and put on Airbnb, and I want great returns.” Generally speaking, a place that you love will not give you the best return on investment.

PETER: But it might give you, yourself, the best return in your heart and soul.

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs] Yeah. And Montenegro does steal people’s hearts.

PETER: Absolutely.

How to contact Peter

LADISLAS MAURICE: I wrote a whole article on the real estate market here in Montenegro, where you should invest, where you should not invest, mistakes to avoid. There’s a link below. And then if you want to get in touch with Peter Square Meter, so you’re the expert when it comes to real estate in Tivat, Luštica, Kotor, and Herceg Novi as well, that whole Bay Area.

PETER: Absolutely.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right. Peter Square Meter, thank you.

PETER: That’s it. It’s been emotional.

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs]