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Introduction
We had been looking at buying a foreign property in the Mediterranean for 2-3 years, and the problem was that our very modest budget would only buy a small property, a long way from the sea and the closest airport.
As we are not wealthy speculators we needed a property that would have the potential to pay its way. In my opinion that meant easy access from Britain and ideally a coastal location.
Between 1999 and 2000 more and more stories started to appear about the potential to buy in Croatia - which seemed to offer all our criteria and still fit our budget.
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Touch down in Trieste, Easter 2002
The first thing we discovered was that the national carrier, Croatia Airlines, did not believe in discounting fares and was going to make the most of its monopoly whilst it could - return flights are typically £200+ with limited routes.
Internal flights:
- Zagreb- Brac £88.00 RTN
- Zagreb- Split £79.00 RTN
- Zagreb- Dubrovnik £95.00 RTN
We decided to fly to Trieste, the closest point in Italy, and hire a car and investigate Croatia southwards.
By flying Ryannair we paid £50 return each so what we saved went in a hire car. You have to be careful when booking your Italian hire car as some do not allow you to drive through Slovenia and Croatia on the contract.
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Istria
We had optimistically expected to drive to Motovun in Istria, northern Croatia, for our first night - it took 4 hours mostly due to customs delays in Slovenia - we made it, but missed dinner, and had to put up with sandwiches.
We stayed at the Kastel Hotel (currently up for sale!), situated on the top of a hill, with a Tuscan style landscape spreading in every direction.
 The town is very picturesque, with narrow cobbled steep streets, which makes the parking very competitive.
The vast amount of guests were, logically enough, mostly Austrian and German - they can presumably shoot down the autobahn in much the same way we head in droves to northern France.
The local wine 'Teran' was very smooth and, bizarrely, there was an antiquarian book shop selling English classics such as Mansfield Park for 400KN (£36) right next to the hotel. Motovun is famous for its yearly arts festival .
We drove onto Porec (40 minutes) with its beautiful harbour full of expensive yachts. We visited our first estate agent and encountered our first taste of 2 recurring problems - lack of brochures/websites and the dominant languages being Croatian and German.
The younger generation, who have been watching MTV incessantly, are usually very fluent. All this, added to the good feeling of being in a foreign country, not just another bit of Euro-land.
We looked at properties in Novigrad - 3 bed, big gardens, seafront for £105,000 - which were beyond us but still represented good value. Porec was stunning in the Spring sunshine, it's a charming town containing the beautiful Basilica of St Euphratsius.
Vrsar is another village near Porec where we visited another estate agent with similar prices. We passed many roadside grappa vendors on the way to Rovinj, a beautiful hilltop town in faded pastels, and another stunning harbour.
We headed south on a breathtaking coastal road with the dramatic coast of the island of Krk to our right.
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 Island of Rab
We had decided to visit the island of Rab so we caught the ferry and were not disappointed. Rab town is on a peninsula with old white houses, a marina on one side, and dense forest on the other.
We decided we could imagine living here, maybe even full time. But it did not fit our rule of being close to an airport. It's definitely a consideration for the future as the prices are generally cheaper than on the mainland.
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A reminder of the war
We continued south along the coastal road, marvelling at the turquoise blue of the sea.
Our direct route took us through Benkovac and Islam Grcki and Islam Latinski where houses with bullet marks in them and bomb craters still marked certain areas. It was our first reminder of the misery that was visited on Croatia in the 1990s and really jarred with our perceptions up to then. The people seem indomitably cheerful and deserve a better future.
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Trogir
We immediately fell in love with Trogir a medieval town built on an island, and conferred with Unesco world heritage status, plus it is 5 kilometres from Split airport.
Split itself is 45 minutes away and is the hub of all the island ferry traffic. We based ourselves in a very comfortable hotel and set about house hunting.
By far the best route was to chat to as many locals as you could, as they will point you in the right direction. This tactic generated 2 houses being sold by their owners direct, one official estate agent, and one unofficial estate agent and 2 solicitors who had properties on their books.
The island of Ciovo, which is connected to Trogir, has had some lovely new developments built, all within 5-10 minutes of the sea.
- 2 flats within in a house £66,000
- 4 apartments in a block £100,000
- FFF - 2 beds-balcony £40,000
We liked the idea of buying in the old town, which is fraught with the problem of ownership. So many people have part shares in houses going back 800 years and a recent war has made many deeds very murky.
But if you are persistent there are some bargains
- 3 bed apartments £40,000
- 3 floor houses £45,000
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Brac
On to Split to catch the ferry to Brac, and reach a nice quiet harbour in Sutivan - less cosmopolitan than the mainland with a real laid back feel to it.
 Bol however is the tourist beach of all Croatia featured in hundreds of brochures, but off season we had the whole of Zlantni Rat (Golden Horn) to ourselves.
This island has an airport and would make a superb base for a holiday home. On the Internet, we had found a beautiful 8-bed place on the harbour, which we were able to visit.
It was on the market for £52,000, a business ready to go.
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Dubrovnik
By now, time was getting very pressing, and we had to decide whether to go onto see the islands of Korcula, Hvar and Vis or get back onto the main land and visit Dubrovnik.
 Because of the latter's reputation we felt we would finish this trip there. We were not disappointed-the place has an amazing 'wow' factor.
The cost of property now reached the highest level we had experienced, but they seemed good value in relation to the potential rental income and the easy travelling to the local airport.
Old Town:
- 4 self-contained studio apartments £73,000
- 4 rooms and terrace £91,000
- 3 beds £75,000
Outside of Town:
- 2 beds, harbour views £105,000
- 9 rooms house, beach 200 metres £300,000
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Split
 We drove back to Split (300 km) and visited the Diocletian Palace which was very impressive and made really interesting by the way the locals have just set up business in and around the Roman ruins.
 Split has a national opera house, a top-flight football team, Hadjuk Split, and all the international shops you could need - as well as an international festival in the summer. Once you forget about the scruffy communist outskirts of town, Split is a very sophisticated place.
We drove the 8 hours back to Trieste excitedly arguing over the various merits of the places we had seen and conscious that we had not scratched the surface of what Croatia had to offer. So we just had to come back as soon as possible.
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Vis Island July 2002
 To concentrate more on central Dalmatia. we elected to fly (cheap Ryanair once more) to Ancona in central Italy and caught a ferry direct to Vis Island.
Arriving at peak tourist summer season had created a problem for accommodation and I would recommend booking for the islands in the summer.
Vis is stunningly beautiful and only became visitable by tourists in the late eighties - it is being called the 'Adriatic Capri', and quite rightly.
 Property prices, whilst rising quickly, are still cheaper than the mainland, and living costs and rebuilding are also a little higher.
Using our 'speak to everyone' technique we were viewing houses in no time at all.
Derelict House with garden £16,000
5 Storey stone house/Courtyard £55,000
Renovated old house £45,000
Modern flat on harbour front £40,000
We were so taken with Vis that we started talking to architects about renovation. We were told that rebuild costs can be between 300-500 euros per square metre and that they would supervise the build for 3% of the building costs.
We visited all the islands - wonderful beaches and an unforgettable holiday.
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... and then it went quiet
We put a bid in for a house in Vis and agreed a deal with architects and sent a formal offer.
... and waited.
We phoned, faxed and emailed and still they did not return our calls I was beginning to understand 'Croatian time' but it was now 6 weeks without any contact. I can only assume that a problem arose over ownership and, rather than face the embarrassment of explaining, it was easier not to return the calls.
To buy in Croatia now will take patience because their system is not ready for us Brits (with the exception of Istria), but when the place is crawling with estate agents and property agents, the price will have quadrupled.
We decided to go back to our first love and put in an offer on a stone house in Trogir.
The first problem was ownership - getting all 8 owners agreeing to sell, then we discovered the house plans registered were different to the actual boundaries. It would cost 1000 euros to have the boundaries clarified by an engineer and the vendor was not willing to pay. After some debate we agreed pay if a pre agreement was set up giving up first refusal to protect our investment.
... and then we waited.
Four months later things were still snarled up in 'Croatian time' so we took the decision to employ an international accountancy firm who spoke English and were based in Zagreb. They would manage the agent and check the documents as they appeared, and also set up a company if necessary to speed up the process. Obviously there is a charge for this service but the peace of mind involved has been worth every penny.
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Beware of Gazumpers!
Whilst waiting for these documents, a full 12 months after the process started and fees had been paid, we were stunned to discover that we had been gazumped. Not by the vendors but by our solicitor - Tomislav Grguric who works out of the "Nirvana" office in Trogir. We have written a formal complaint to the Croatian Bar about Tomislav Grguric.
When a seller has clear title over real estate, the process is much simpler. If, like us, you prefer the older properties then do everything in your power to check it has clean deeds before commencing as we are sure that this added to our problems.
During the socialist era the process of registering title over real estate was, to put it mildly, neglected. Unfortunately, that means that the eventual purchaser has to compensate for about five decades of neglect in recording title (and bear the associated costs). As an historical aside, the neglect in recording title is rooted in excessive inheritance taxes in the former Yugoslavia (to discourage private ownership).
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Back to the Drawing Board
So, a year after we started, we are back to the beginning of the process.
Our desire to purchase, and our love of Croatia, has not been dimmed by our unhappy experiences. We are booked on flights to Ancona for the summer of 2003 to start house hunting all over again.
This time, knowing what we now know, we hope not to repeat similar mistakes and we will go and visit 18 Monarska in Trogir to see how the latest foreigners are getting on with their dealings with Tomislav Grguric and how their purchase is going!
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The Peljesac Peninsula
 Having watched a number of Brits visit the Peljesac Peninsula and successfully complete using the English consultant down there, we thought we too should check it out.
The drive takes around 90 minutes from Dubrovnik and the second half of the trip has dramatic scenery as you travel the length of the peninsula passing oyster beds, mountain views and vineyards.
 As you drop down into Orebic there are stunning views of Korcula Island and Korcula old town opposite and the towering Mount Ilija on the right. It is this mountain, which protects Orebic creating a microclimate that provides a year round mild climate and Mediterranean vegetation.
We viewed a number of properties with Chris and in the end selected a traditional stone house nestling at the base of Mount Ilija yet just 800 metres from the sea.
We completed within 12 days of viewing the house and are now proud owners of a lovely house with stunning views.
So after 18 months of attempting to buy we have finally found our place in the sun.
Watch this space....
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