Bearish, the islands, depending on which one you chose, can be mega expensive (crazily so on Brac or Hvar) or reasonable (Zlarin, Murter). The value is thre on some, like Murter, which are connected to the mainland by bridge, as today, for example, the high winds from the north are blowing and ferries to Hvar and Brac have been cancelled. It doesn't happen too often, but sometimes it does and can ruin your holiday or rentals!
But what clubman said isn't fully correct, there is now legislation to stop people (local or no) from buying whole islands, which has happened hardly ever, but it's enough of a sop to the cave dwellers who would like to drag the country back 500 years, yet still keep the tourists coming in.
The fact is that there was lots of papertalk (esp. the right wing mouthpieces) about stopping foreigners buying altogether, but that was all it was, papertalk. It wasn't a surprise that it happened in the middle of the summer when nothing of note was happening and the newspapers were running out of attractive, scantily clad Czechs and Poles to bring tot he drooling public, so a headline of 20,000 houses in foreign ownership, started tongues wagging.
What it failed to mention was that they weren't all houses (it included all factories, land, apartments), and that more than half were owned by Croatian companies based in, eg Bosnia, Monaco, for tax purposes (including Concorde Travel's main partner here, surprise surprise!). Another lump, approx. 20% were properties owned by native born Croats working or living abroad, and 5-10% by Diaspora with Croatian passports etc. When you take out international companies and their holdings, it was down to something like 3-4,000 properties owned by non-nationals. It died a death when people actually finished the article.
But again it cropped up, when one extreme right politician stepped up to defend himself from drink driving charges by saying "There's far worse in the country than me hitting 3 parked cars and a pedestrian while trolleyed, how about all them foreigners, the government should only let them buy for 40 years and then take the property back off them!" Okay, he didn't say it quite like that, but when he sobered up and was looking for an excuse, he said the latter part and it hit the headlines. It disappeared when the citizens realised it was an early April Fools.
But what clubman said isn't fully correct, there is now legislation to stop people (local or no) from buying whole islands, which has happened hardly ever, but it's enough of a sop to the cave dwellers who would like to drag the country back 500 years, yet still keep the tourists coming in.
The fact is that there was lots of papertalk (esp. the right wing mouthpieces) about stopping foreigners buying altogether, but that was all it was, papertalk. It wasn't a surprise that it happened in the middle of the summer when nothing of note was happening and the newspapers were running out of attractive, scantily clad Czechs and Poles to bring tot he drooling public, so a headline of 20,000 houses in foreign ownership, started tongues wagging.
What it failed to mention was that they weren't all houses (it included all factories, land, apartments), and that more than half were owned by Croatian companies based in, eg Bosnia, Monaco, for tax purposes (including Concorde Travel's main partner here, surprise surprise!). Another lump, approx. 20% were properties owned by native born Croats working or living abroad, and 5-10% by Diaspora with Croatian passports etc. When you take out international companies and their holdings, it was down to something like 3-4,000 properties owned by non-nationals. It died a death when people actually finished the article.
But again it cropped up, when one extreme right politician stepped up to defend himself from drink driving charges by saying "There's far worse in the country than me hitting 3 parked cars and a pedestrian while trolleyed, how about all them foreigners, the government should only let them buy for 40 years and then take the property back off them!" Okay, he didn't say it quite like that, but when he sobered up and was looking for an excuse, he said the latter part and it hit the headlines. It disappeared when the citizens realised it was an early April Fools.