Flat-hopping in Belgrade: A Survivor’s Guide

Yu Biznis Centar is a combination of business and residential space. In these buildings are some of the fanciest and most expensive Belgrade apartments. Despite financial crisis owners can still get 1000 euro for 100 square meters here.

Belgrade has a lot to offer in terms of real estate to rent. Between the two world wars, there was jolly construction business, as flourishing as the city itself. Most of the Vracar villas and apartment buildings were made then, as well as parts of downtown Belgrade, Vozdovac or Profesorska kolonija.

As times changed from state to private ownership, much of the real estate was given back to old owners or bought by the residents that had occupied the premises since the late 1940s onwards.

When I came to Belgrade in mid-2008 the crisis had hit the world, but not Serbia. Apartment prices were high if you wanted to buy, with some people paying 5,000 euro per square meter in new apartment blocks in Novi Beograd.

A family friend recommended that I rent a place off her friend. It was an apartment in Nusiceva, close to the Politika building, which is as central as you can get in Belgrade, unless you are on Terazije proper.

Beyond the heavy doors was a worn-down building but things inside were quite different. In the 1930s this had been some kind of a chamber of commerce. It even had a restaurant on the second floor, exclusively for the members.

Overlooking the inner courtyard of this impressive building were tiny apartments for service. No elevator reached them then or reaches them now. If you live on the fourth floor, you need to take the elevator on the business side of the building to the fifth and then climb down an improvised wooden ladder.

Mountain climber that I am, it presented no demanding task to master the narrow stairs to the second floor. What I rented for what was then considered a good deal for 300 euro was a corridor under open skies, which passed by an office where old men played chess, and which led to two-and-a-half bedrooms, plus an inner corridor, tiny kitchen and a bathroom. Somehow it was all fitted into 29 square meters, which is less than a moderately spacious room in a normal-sized apartment. To reach the bathroom from the master bedroom, I had to walk through two meters of fresh air.

Joined by two girls from Slovenia who came to Belgrade for academic and romantic reasons, I plunged into the pool of large apartments rental market. By then, the pool was full of fish, but few seemed hungry. The dramatic fall in prices for large apartments happened in mid-2008, when it was clear that crisis would not avoid the Balkans. What just a few months earlier had been on offer for 1,200-1,500 euro was now accessible for 800-1000 with owners prepared to make significant compromises.

But for Belgrade apartment owners to make compromise, they have to like you. Wars, crisis and long-lasting poverty have left an imprint of mistrust in people. If they deem you trustworthy, i.e., if they suspect you won’t demolish the place and/or, leave without paying a couple of overdue rents, you can offer whichever price you are prepared to pay, and the odds are they will agree, however insane it might seem.

This is more or less as stylish as it gets in Belgrade. There are many apartments looking like this one in newly built buildings of 4-6 floors at Crveni krst. Owners would charge between 450 and 600 euro per month for roughly 100 square meters of living space in those buildings.

We were first taken by a real estate agent to a fancy-looking duplex close to the perfumes of Belgrade Zoo. The owner was strict about her demands and said she could never go under 800. But as time passed and she seemed to like us, we stayed and chatted for some minutes. All of a sudden, she presented a bottle of homemade brandy. Knowing it would be rude to refuse, we accepted. After a few sips, she said 800 might not be the final price. Had we finished the bottle, she would probably have offered us 650, but being new to Serbia, a few sips was all we could take, and that brought us to 750.

As some of my then household preferred things alternative, we went for some arty hand-decorated place on one of the Belgrade's most polluted boulevards, but overlooking the strangely calm Profesorska kolonija. The owner wanted 800 euro for an apartment that consisted of three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an extremely big living room with kitchen and a loggia. In total it was more than 100 square meters. We offered 550 and she said yes.

As the owner was former military strongman, he wanted clean papers. So, the agency that assisted with renting the place made two separate contracts. One was for tax administration, which was made up to some 250 euro, and another, the internal one, stated the real price.

Up to that point, I considered agencies here to be professional when dealing with international clientele. When the contract is signed, they take one half of a month’s rent from you, and half from the owner. Add the deposit, which you have to pay when you move into a furnished apartment and which is almost always about a month’s rent plus the first rent in advance.

My first experience with a rental agency in Belgrade was when I was looking for a place for myself some months after I moved here. I dialled some numbers in ads, which all turned out to belong to the same agency. It was in Balkanska. With walls the colour of badly digested fruit and some 50 old-style mobile telephones scattered on several desks, the agency looked like a set-up. I was seated and told I’d have to pay 5,000 dinars (then around 65 euro) in advance, for which I get ten telephone numbers belonging to owners of apartments that roughly suited my requirements. None of them really did.

Such agencies still exist. They probably serve to lure in students from inner Serbia who climb up Balkanska in order to reach the city. These agencies also use the internet to advertise, again mainly for student needs, unrealistically cheap, small apartments. When you call the numbers, they carefully listen to what you ask for. If you show some knowledge of the Belgrade real estate scene, they usually say: “This apartment is not for you,” and hang up.

With regular agencies, you call or send an email, saying what you are looking for. An agent is then assigned to you and you go and see as many places you want, as many times you want. If you have particular requirements, like an indoor swimming pool, they connect with other agencies to see what is on the market. You pay when you sign the contract.

Back in the Palilula Warhol apartment things were not looking so good. After learning about some less pleasant matters that might have been connected with the place, we moved out.

Again, I was assigned to look for the place and a real estate agent helped me out.

The very end of Karadjordjeva close to Kalamegden is a noisy place by which hundreds of trucks pass every day. At first, I was reluctant to go in and felt angry with the agent for taking me there. But when I saw the masterfully laid-out and tastefully renovated apartment in what I learned was one of the oldest apartment buildings in Belgrade, I was stunned. One of the bedrooms had glass doors overlooking everything from Banovo brdo, via Brankov most and Gardos to Pobednik on Kalemegdan.

The owner was a tough negotiator. She wanted 650 euro for the apartment, which she wanted to rent as office, but could not, because of the location. As the place had perfect sound isolation, three bedrooms, a central saloon with a small kitchen, but only one bathroom, I offered 500 euro, but had to settle for 550.

An old-style apparent. You will find many such apartments on lower Dorcol. Students usually rent them and pay around 300 euro or more for two bedrooms plus living room.

When it comes to furnishing, apartments for rent are a mixed bag. If you look hard and press the agents, you may find something decent. Big apartments often mean flashy decoration, which tries to look classy but looks ugly instead. Smaller, cheaper apartments have beds on which grandma once slept. The space in between the two extremes is thin indeed.

The Karadjordjeva apartment owners were, however, quite prepared to furnish the apartment in accordance to our demands. I made a long list, and they met every bit of it. The technical stuff they bought in Belgrade and the furniture they brought from IKEA in Budapest.

In this case, and all the cases to follow, there was no copy of the contract for the tax authorities. Everything was done internally, and the money went straight into the pockets of the owner.

When the girls moved out and my new roommate moved in, we used the third room as a study. After one-and-a-half years, both our incomes grew suddenly and very significantly, so he proposed we find a big place that would give us maximum privacy and luxury and the ability to host chic dinner parties.

Having found almost nothing for one month, I almost gave up. The agent proposed we see a place that did not look at all attractive on the photos. But after seeing it live I was sure we had found the perfect spot. The 110-square-meter apartment close to parliament is one of the finest I have seen in Belgrade. With a spacious living room, two large bedrooms and two full-size bathrooms, one of which had a Jacuzzi of 10 square meters, we were on the top of the game.

But it was the price that we managed to get for that was a real shocker. We were told that the owners had been trying to rent it out for some time. Higher-ranking diplomats lacked another room, and to many domestic clients it was most likely under-furnished, because it contained only the essential.

They had been renting it for 1,400 euro to a diplomat who moved out in 2010. As the months passed they lowered the price to 1,000. I said I loved the place and would look after it as my very own, but could not budget more than 550. To my astonishment, they said yes.

The roommate at some point heard the call of his northern homeland and responded, so I had to move. For the first time, I moved relatively far from what I considered the city centre, to a place called Dunavski kej.

I was always bewildered by the fact that there are only 20 or so apartment blocks in the old part of Belgrade that are built on the river, located beyond Dorcol, some 15 minutes walk from Knez Mihailova.

In one of the buildings on the river, I rented two same-sized apartments. One was renovated and furnished according to my demands. With places like Dunavski kej, where you live only if you like the river or have a family that likes it, there is less space for negotiating. Though living on the waterside is still considered by many anything but posh, things are changing fast and these places are gaining popularity among the buying and renting crowds alike. So, despite the apartment being some 60 something square meters, the owners would not take a dime less than 450 euro. With prices of apartments still dropping at that point to depths unknown, this was a surprise. But when they told me I would have at my disposal 4,500 euro to furnish the apartment however I liked, I said OK.

The second apartment in the same building was same size, but not renovated and empty. I had no problems getting it for 300 euro. Dunavski kej buildings are among the few in Belgrade with constant hot water. The system sometimes fails, but it is a relief if you are used to not having a boiler over your bathtub.

Looking for an apartment on Vracar, I was stunned to learn that “info stan”, which is another name for central heating, plus water and some maintenance costs, can vary for an apartment of 80 square meters between 75 and 140 euro. You pay more if a building is new, has elevator and so on.

The price situation now is that for 450 euro you can get a three-bedroom apartment of 80 to 100 square meters in very good condition and on a very good location in the city centre or on Vracar.

Smaller apartment prices seem reluctant to feel the crisis. It is hard to get a decent one-bedroom apartment for less than 250 euro.

Belville is a set of a dozen of large apartment buildings built for the 2009 Universiade. After the sportsmen left, the tenants moved in. Expect to pay around 500 euro per month for two bedrooms with decent furniture.

The number of rooms is something that frequently causes confusion, particularly when clients are used to Western European standards.

In Serbia, a one-bedroom apartment means that there is one room in total. The kitchen is most likely connected with it. One and a half bedrooms is the first step beyond what most foreign clients would perceive as a studio. There, the bedroom is separated from the rest of the apartment. If you want two separate bedrooms plus a normal-size living room, you look under “trosobni” (three-bedroom apartments).

With perceptions of size, quality and the perspective of the market being different everywhere, I would rank Belgrade as generally friendly when it comes to looking for an apartment.

Some owners, however, may opt not to fully share the information about high info stan, or about outstanding debts owed to the electric company, so look at three months of bills before signing a contract.

“Etazno grejanje“, which means independent heating, does not sound bad, because you use it only when it is cold and don’t pay for it the whole year, like for the central heating. However, with electricity cost in Serbia being among the highest in Europe, you can end up paying some 250 per month to heat an 80-square-meter apartment, even if the system is new and consumes less energy.

There seems to be no law here commanding the residents of Belgrade apartment buildings to create special funds after the building is 10 or 15 years old, where the money is collected for maintenance. In one of the apartments I considered renting, they wanted me to pay 40 euro per month for roof repair.

Belgrade apartment owners have been known to offer significantly larger prices to foreigners than locals, which is unfair, but they can do it nevertheless. If you are a foreigner, try to act Belgrade-savvy, like someone who knows that when the owner offers you a sip of domestic brandy, you don’t turn it down. If nothing else, it makes bargaining much easier.