Post by Peter Ellis on May 25, 2006 9:50:31 GMT 1
We get a lot of requests for building land in Croatia, particularly in Istria. We sell a lot to local builders but it is not always quite so easy for foreign buyers. The building boom has fuelled price increases and building land that was available inland for around Eur20/m2 a year ago now goes for three times that and more if the location has a sea view or other particular attractions. Land within a kilometre of the coast now goes for above Eur200/m2 and sometimes much more if the local development plan offers a high density on the plot. Land at those prices is only suitable for apartments, as it is just too expensive to build houses on.
Our foreign buyers face two problems. The first is that the very best land goes very quickly. Local buyers can look at it within a day of our being offered it and can put a deposit down immediately. Anyone hoping to come out to look at it in a month's time will miss it completely. Most of it sells before we can get it on our website.
The other may be less obvious. A price of, say Eur60/m2, may be quite acceptable but if someone only wants a plot big enough to build one house on, getting a plot of a suitable size may not only be harder, but will vary the total price considerably. Most available land is not in neat rectangles of fixed sizes carved out of a bigger plot. Much land here is in relatively small plots as a result of inheritance divisions, so we don't see a lot of big parcels suitable for carving into lots of single house sized plots. What ones that do come up will be bought by builders, whose profit comes from building houses on them, not in dealing in land. In any case, carving up larger plots results in losses from access roads and the cost of land to a buyer of a single plot will have to reflect this.
Plots on offer suitable for a single house will be as the land comes and may vary from 600 to a couple of thousand square metres. Whilst the latter may sound more than enough, plots come in all shapes and sizes and a large one that tapers off may still only be suitable for fitting a single house onto. For most buyers, the actual size of a garden may be largely irrelevant, so long as there is 'enough', yet the hugely variable size of plots results in very big price differences, even for land at a similar cost per square metre.On these examples, there will be a price variation between Eur36,000 and Eur120,000 for land to build a single house on.
Having said all this, anyone who can move quickly and has a realistic budget can still find that buying land and building themselves can offer worthwhile savings on buying a ready built house, although it will obviously take much longer and getting the various permissions is slower here than it would be in, say, the UK. We can arrange architects who can submit designs and apply for all the permissions, as well as monitor the construction. We can also arrange builders.
We currently have plots from as little as Eur30/m2.
Our foreign buyers face two problems. The first is that the very best land goes very quickly. Local buyers can look at it within a day of our being offered it and can put a deposit down immediately. Anyone hoping to come out to look at it in a month's time will miss it completely. Most of it sells before we can get it on our website.
The other may be less obvious. A price of, say Eur60/m2, may be quite acceptable but if someone only wants a plot big enough to build one house on, getting a plot of a suitable size may not only be harder, but will vary the total price considerably. Most available land is not in neat rectangles of fixed sizes carved out of a bigger plot. Much land here is in relatively small plots as a result of inheritance divisions, so we don't see a lot of big parcels suitable for carving into lots of single house sized plots. What ones that do come up will be bought by builders, whose profit comes from building houses on them, not in dealing in land. In any case, carving up larger plots results in losses from access roads and the cost of land to a buyer of a single plot will have to reflect this.
Plots on offer suitable for a single house will be as the land comes and may vary from 600 to a couple of thousand square metres. Whilst the latter may sound more than enough, plots come in all shapes and sizes and a large one that tapers off may still only be suitable for fitting a single house onto. For most buyers, the actual size of a garden may be largely irrelevant, so long as there is 'enough', yet the hugely variable size of plots results in very big price differences, even for land at a similar cost per square metre.On these examples, there will be a price variation between Eur36,000 and Eur120,000 for land to build a single house on.
Having said all this, anyone who can move quickly and has a realistic budget can still find that buying land and building themselves can offer worthwhile savings on buying a ready built house, although it will obviously take much longer and getting the various permissions is slower here than it would be in, say, the UK. We can arrange architects who can submit designs and apply for all the permissions, as well as monitor the construction. We can also arrange builders.
We currently have plots from as little as Eur30/m2.