So much change in Montenegro
Both positive and negative. Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first.
Negative developments in Montenegro
1. Residency has become more complicated. Previously, any real estate purchase could qualify you for residency. But now, a minimum investment of €150,000 is required.
And while just having a company and paying yourself a minimum wage as director was once enough to qualify for residency, this option now only works for EU, Swiss and Norwegians. All other nationalities must now pay at least 5,000 € in taxes and social security per year to renew. For the first application, this is not needed.
Will there be a loophole?
For example, say you’re American and you get residency in the first year then apply from scratch in the second year instead of renewing. Maybe this will work, but who knows. Everything is still very murky and the bureaucracy right now is a bit paralyzed.
2. Montenegro is gradually harmonizing visa-free access with the Schengen zone. Turks, Azeris, Russians, Kazakhs, etc that typically had visa-free access to Montenegro will gradually lose this access. This is not good for tourism and erodes the country’s sovereignty in terms of international relations and strategic positioning.
Positive developments in Montenegro
1. Massive increase in flights to Europe. To compensate for the expected decrease in tourism from the aforementioned countries, the government has worked to get Wizz Air to open a base in Podgorica airport. 17 new routes will be opened, with direct flights to France, Spain, Italy, Holland, Sweden, Poland, Germany and Slovenia. This means Montenegro’s main airport is set to see a passenger increase of close to 50% in peak season in 2026.
2. More Arab money coming in. Qatar is now in discussions to open an embassy in Podgorica and even start direct flights to Doha. Gulf Arabs don’t do this without thinking of large real estate deals.
3. Montenegro is set to join the EU soon, probably in 2028. Montenegro keeps making progress with the EU accession chapters. The EU is in crisis and needs to show the world it is still expanding. Accepting a small country of 630,000 people won’t make a dent in the budget. It’s certainly not great for freedom and the country’s sovereignty, but for the real estate market it’ll be good.
4. Montenegro joined SEPA. SEPA is a payment mechanism for fast and cheap Euro banking transactions. This will make doing business between Montenegro and the EU a lot easier. Owning real estate in Montenegro means you can open a bank account in the country, which will be a good gateway into European banking. That being said, banks right now are catching up on compliance and are currently in shock mode. They are barely opening new accounts. Eventually this will get resolved, but for now Montenegrin banking is barely functional.
I recently bought more real estate in Montenegro
It was not an investment, but rather a lifestyle purchase for myself and my family in Tivat. I really love the place.
But there isn’t only Kotor Bay and Tivat in Montenegro. The whole coast (and interior) is gorgeous. In this video with Ksenija we looked at some real estate with amazing views near Budva.
The authoritative guide on investing in Montenegro
Here is the the Montenegro Real Estate Investor Guide.
Feel free to get in touch with Ksenija if you are looking for property in Montenegro.
And click here for more info on obtaining residency in Montenegro.
To a World of Opportunities,
The Wandering Investor.
Services in Montenegro:
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Articles on Montenegro:
- How to flip a house for a 50% gain in Montenegro
- Montenegro Real Estate Market: 2026 Investor Guide
- Decent rental yields for Real Estate in Montenegro
- Buying Montenegro Real Estate – a Case Study with ROI figures
- The Pros and Cons of living in Montenegro
- Investment and lifestyle real estate in Tivat, Montenegro – a top European low-tax safe haven
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Transcript of “Seaview Properties near Budva, Montenegro: Investment Options”
LADISLAS MAURICE: Hello everyone. Ladislas Maurice of The Wandering Investor, and today we’re going to look at some beautiful property in Montenegro next to Budva, because often when people think of Budva, they think of a big city, they think of noise, of partying, et cetera. But a ten-minute drive away from Budva, you can find sublime, beautiful properties in such areas with such views. So, Ksenija, you’ve been in the real estate game here for many, many years. Can you tell us a little bit about what is beyond Budva?
KSENIJA: Yeah, it’s a good point that you’ve made out actually, because a lot of people are not aware of this beauty that we have. Just on ten minutes drive, we have one of the amazing beaches here, one of the, I can say probably the most photographed place in Montenegro, which is Sveti Stefan. And where we are now currently, it’s one of the top proposal places in Montenegro, actually. Besides that, this place has been famous for being one of the, I can say, luxury landmarks. It was before like 15th century fisherman village, Sveti Stefan, but now it is a home of luxury resort, Aman.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, it’s really, really beautiful, eh? Gosh. So, people can wake up every day to this view.
KSENIJA: Yeah, we are actually going to see one place just here. It’s a three-bedroom apartment in a complex with a pool, with amazing views, pretty much like this.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool, fantastic. And then we’ll also do all the ROI numbers in terms of rental income, how much you can expect on Airbnb after all the expenses, et cetera, to get to net ROI figure. And then we’re going to go check out another little apartment.
KSENIJA: Yes, we’re going to see another studio, which is much closer to the sea, close to the Fisherman Village. It’s a studio with amazing sea views as well, and very good location.
Beach access in Sveti Stefan
LADISLAS MAURICE: So tell us a bit more about the beach access here.
KSENIJA: Yeah, so here, if we talk about this place where we are now, it’s 10 minutes drive to the beaches at Sveti Stefan. Here we have approximately around five to seven beaches in this neighborhood. But let’s speak about Sveti Stefan, which is the closest to here. This was actually ex King’s and Queen’s residency. And there are two beaches, Queen’s and King’s beach. And then there is the beach which is also of a hotel and partially public. It is also very nicely tucked in in the area where there is greenery, so you can see here on our right side, this is the biggest park actually. It’s called Milocher. So it’s amazing walk through the woods to get to the beaches. So also all of the beaches are sandy and they are accessible for everyone.
Taxis and transport in Montenegro
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, so if you invest in such a place where we’re going to see in the hills, you either want to own a car or you want to rent a car. So I think this is really important. There is no public transport around here and trying to get a taxi is possible, but it’s taxis don’t work very well in Montenegro, right?
KSENIJA: Well, you can get a taxi. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. It’s not like Uber that is quite accessible. There are taxi drivers and there is taxi companies that you can contact and basically get a taxi to here as well.
LADISLAS MAURICE: They’re usually late, so you just need to you just need to factor that in. All right, fantastic. So let’s go check out that two-bedroom apartment.
KSENIJA: Yeah, let’s go see the place.
Tour of Sveti Stefan apartment with sea view
LADISLAS MAURICE: We just did a walk-through of this place. It’s amazing. You’ll see the view.
KSENIJA: Bedroom one, bathroom two, bedroom two, bedroom three, bathroom two. We have kitchen here on our left side. This is the living room, dining area.
LADISLAS MAURICE: And look at this view. Gosh.
KSENIJA: Amazing. Amazing. Wow.
LADISLAS MAURICE: How much for this apartment?
KSENIJA: The price of the apartment is 400,000. It’s a three-bedroom apartment with two bathrooms, with a private parking and a part of a complex with a pool.
LADISLAS MAURICE: You know what the funny thing is, when we were doing the numbers, we’re sitting down here and doing the numbers, liaising with the with the team that does all the rental management to to get some to some proper numbers which we’ll we’ll share in a bit. At some point Ksenia mentioned the the square meters of this apartment, and I hadn’t even asked her. And usually it’s one of the first things I ask when I go into a place, as you know, how many square meters, then I calculate the price per square meter. But when you see something like this, the price per square meter is almost irrelevant. It’s it’s big enough, three bedrooms, two bathrooms. This view is going nowhere. Um, when you first sent me pictures of this place,
KSENIJA: Yeah, you had a question.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, I had a question. I was like, oh, what can they build in front? Essentially, the answer is no. We’re going to add some drone footage. You’ll see why people can’t build. It’s literally just a cliff. So this is absolutely unique. This is the sort of place that you keep in your portfolio, you make sure you maintain it properly. It’ll always, you know, maintain its value one way or another.
KSENIJA: I think it’s a great place. First of all, the position itself. As we were speaking before, it’s only 10 minutes drive to the beaches and to Sveti Stefan, to all the restaurants. However, you have a private pool which you can use. It’s only it’s very private because it’s only six apartments in the building. As you can see, the area is very peaceful. It’s amazing place where you can spend time with the family or eventually if you do like to rent it out, it’s going to be very popular because this view is obviously something that sells the place and that people want to, you know, they want to enjoy by the pool, to have their drinks, to enjoy the sunset. This is probably the best sunset that you can get generally here on Sveti Stefan from this position. So the location itself, as I said, Budva as a touristic destination, we’ve been speaking a lot about it. It’s not only about the center of Budva, it’s about these places that offer vicinity to the beaches, because Budva itself has more than 20 sandy beaches, and majority of them are actually in this area. So you can spend the time in the morning by the pool, in the afternoon, go to the beach, go to the restaurants. The place itself, when we’re talking about the apartment, it’s quite spacious, three bedroom. Generally, very rare property in the market. I was telling this to Ladislav, we don’t have these properties much, I think you haven’t seen them so far. There is one villa here just by this apartment, which is 1.5 million for sale currently.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Look, if you buy this and you put it on Airbnb and you have a low occupancy rate, you’re doing something wrong. Cool. Let’s do let’s do the numbers.
Airbnb ROI calculation for Sveti Stefan apartment
KSENIJA: Let’s do the numbers, yeah. So when speaking about rental income, our team generally can help with property management as well. And we did some
LADISLAS MAURICE: How many properties do you manage?
KSENIJA: More than 150 properties we have in our portfolio that we are managing, plus also our projects as well. When talking about the ROI for this property, the numbers are quite good. When we say the price is 400,000, plus with additional fees for the real estate transfer tax, for the notary’s fees, in total, the price was 417,800 euros.
LADISLAS MAURICE: And that’s before negotiating. I’m pretty sure you can negotiate a bit on this property.
KSENIJA: Yeah, there is, let’s say, always like possibility to negotiate something.
LADISLAS MAURICE: So we’re being conservative with the numbers.
KSENIJA: The prices generally in the summer season go from 230 up to 330 euros during the season. So we talk about May to October, which are the busiest month here. Of course, July and August, it’s always the peak and the occupancy is go even up to 95%. And then we have the out-of-season revenue for six months which can go, as you can see, up to 8,400 euros. So in total, when calculating all the costs, monthly service charges 300 euros, electricity is 120 euros per month, water consumption 30 euros, trash 10 euros, internet and TV 45, and we’ve added here the yearly property tax, which is 800 euros, and on top of it, just for any, let’s say, repairs or just to have the maintenance budget, it’s 1,000 euros.
LADISLAS MAURICE: I’m just thinking of the US. If I were to buy an equivalent property in the US with something unique like this, pool and all that, yearly property of taxes of $1,000 is less than $1,000 is pretty laughable.
KSENIJA: So we are talking here about when calculating all of this and having in mind our fee, which is 30%, property management fee, if you want us to rent the place, the net income is 6%.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Which is a good rental yield in the big scheme of things, especially for a property that has something absolutely unique. Typically you can get better rental yields if you go and get some random studio and some hole, but in a decent location and you’re just sweating the asset, but it you’re not you don’t really have anything nice. Here you actually have a property that you just keep in your portfolio, a bit of like evergreen property in your portfolio.
KSENIJA: It’s quite, I would say, very lucrative investment because in the end of the day, if you decide to sell it in one point, the value can only go up, because as we spoke, this property is very rare and very unique, and the views, I mean, you see for yourself, something that is permanent view is also something that is not so common in Montenegro.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, so by the time this video gets published, it’s likely that this property will have been sold, but I think the the point is, we’re not here to sell this property. The point is, you can find such properties in Montenegro if if you’re patient.
Fantastic. So now let’s go to the next property which is in the village of
Driving to Pržno
KSENIJA: Pržno. It’s the area of Pržno, also close by to here, we’re going to see one studio. Let’s go.
LADISLAS MAURICE: All right. Let’s go check it out.
So, Ksenija, the the season 2023 in Montenegro from a rentals and tourism point of view was not that great. Is there something that you observed within your company?
KSENIJA: It really depends from the, let’s say, type of the properties that we have for rent. I have to say that we have a had a decline of, let’s say, tourists in the apartments which were generally just regular apartments without many amenities, but what we’ve seen as a good thing picking up is actually one of our projects where we are doing a lot of facilities like sauna, fitness, steam room, pool. This we’ve seen the increase of the demand for these kind of properties. Our new project was on, let’s say, 80% booked and our project that has been operating for years is 100% booked in the peak of the season. So I see kind of luxury tourism developing much more in Montenegro. Less maybe regional tourists than before.
Tourism demographics in Montenegro
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, it’s I mean the demographics are really changing. I’ve been coming here to Montenegro for 10 years. Initially, well, back then it was a lot of Serbs and Bosnians and people from the region, Macedonians, a lot of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarus. Now, I mean, obviously, it’s still a lot of Serbs, they’re still the number one and Bosnians and all that, but less as Montenegro has become a lot more developed and more expensive. And less Russians and Belarusians because of the sanctions. And a lot more people from Western Europe. A lot more Americans as well, I’d say.
KSENIJA: Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of Americans in the last period, a lot of Germans, people from Poland, from Czech Republic, from Europe, a lot of UK. We have now like just Tivat five flights to five different cities in UK.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, what you raised about Central Europe is is true as well. Back then, people from Poland and the Czech Republic weren’t buying as much. And they didn’t have as much purchasing power as well. Uh, but now they do.
Infrastructure development in Montenegro
KSENIJA: And also I have a lot of clients, one big thing for them is that it’s accessible by car also. So you can drive from Czech Republic, Poland, but more of them actually driving from Czech Republic to here. So this is something I think that will also increase soon as our highway is done, but with the with the infrastructure that is also developing and we’ll see more people from Europe actually coming and driving as well to here.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, there’s good progress on the the highway between Tivat and Budva. We’re driving there this morning. And also we’re seeing a lot of people coming from the Middle East. So both from the Gulf. So the UAE are massive investors here in Montenegro. So we have a lot of tourism from the Gulf, as well as increasingly Israeli tourism.
KSENIJA: There are also now negotiations with the one of the biggest investors from UAE, um, actually who is considering a couple of locations in Montenegro for development. One of them now is Buliace, which is from here 15 minutes. Amazing also area which is still underdeveloped. So they are in a negotiations on governmental level.
LADISLAS MAURICE: And that’s the developer that built the Burj Khalifa, right?
KSENIJA: Yes.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. So I think, again, you see all all the things that are happening in in Montenegro, it’s uh truly, truly impressive.
Tour of sea view apartment in Pržno
LADISLAS MAURICE: So, here we are. How do we pronounce this place?
KSENIJA: It’s called Pržno.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Pržno. All right.
KSENIJA: This time you got it.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. So we did a little walk through of the studio. The building is nice inside, well maintained. How many square meters and what’s the price?
KSENIJA: 31 square meter and the price is 135,000 euros. Quite spacious studio, I mean, with sea view, which is also going to be permanent because everything in front is already constructed.
LADISLAS MAURICE: So now we’re going to walk down to the beach and I’m going to calculate how long it takes because on your ad it says seven-minute walk to the beach, so.
KSENIJA: Let’s see. Let’s try.
Quality of beaches in Pržno
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, what people need to understand is when they come to Montenegro, I mean, it literally means Black Mountain. It’s quite hilly.
KSENIJA: Yeah, you need to be in a good shape.
LADISLAS MAURICE: For sure. So this little short walk down to the beach is really easy.
KSENIJA: Yeah.
LADISLAS MAURICE: But the slightly less short walk back up to the apartment is definitely a little harder.
KSENIJA: So we have on 200 meters Pržno beach, and on 300 meters, there’s Kamenovo beach. And of course, Milocher Park on just 500 meters. So everything is walking vicinity from this place. Let’s go.
LADISLAS MAURICE: I’m impressed.
KSENIJA: Yeah.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Usually agents, they say five minutes is 15 minutes. But here it was actually seven minutes.
Airbnb net rental yield calculation in Pržno
KSENIJA: Here we use the same methodology for calculating the rental income, which comes when calculating all of the costs, around 5% per year. Net.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. So typically when you look at smaller surfaces like this, I would expect the rental yield to be a bit higher than the big apartment. That big apartment was special and it has a unique selling point and thus it commands a premium on the on the Airbnb market and it’ll always be essentially rented out. I mean, renting that place out, as long as it’s priced correctly, you’ll always have someone.
KSENIJA: Yeah, it’s very easy to rent out because Pržno area is very small, it’s like a small village where a lot of people want to be because of generally this unique also beach, unique vibe. You have just a couple of restaurants, it’s very private, very calm and yet a family place.
LADISLAS MAURICE: And what you find generally speaking is that the net rental yields are a little higher around the whole Budva area than around the Tivat and Kotor area. Just a little bit higher.
How to contact Ksenija for Montenegro real estate
LADISLAS MAURICE: So I wrote a whole report on the real estate market here in Montenegro, the places that are interesting, the places you should avoid, some key learnings, statistics, recent trends, et cetera. There’s a link below and then also if you want to get in touch with Ksenia, so you can help people find property, your company also does all the management, all that.
KSENIJA: Yeah, we we work definitely in Budva, but generally we cover all the coastline, so we can help with anything.
LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, there’s a link below. Thank you, Ksenija.
KSENIJA: You’re welcome. It was nice speaking to you.
LADISLAS MAURICE: Make sure to download my free ebook, 12 Mistakes to Avoid When Investing in International Real Estate, which you can find on my website, link below, and feel free to follow me on Instagram @thewanderinginvestor. I look forward to hearing from you.
