New Rentals in Old Europe
Date: 05/08/2008
You'll find plenty of opportunities for the short-term rental market in Slovakia's capital.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Bratislava, Slovakia
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My Bratislava home is a short-term rental: a third-floor studio on Rajska Street. This is city center, District 1—but not the historic center. The studio is adequate for minimalists, but not luxurious. The building’s ground-floor glass-panel frontage is cracked and grimy. Its elevator (installed in 1945) has already broken down twice. And this costs me an overpriced $85 per night.
The opera and ballet season is underway, golden forsythia blooms in parks, but March snow flurries don’t make for idyllic Danube pleasure cruises. Even so, finding reasonably priced accommodation in Slovakia’s capital wasn’t easy. Other agency apartments were fully booked. There’s no oversupply of tourist rentals—so the right property could be a gold mine. City average for buyers is $2,380 per square meter.
Bratislava’s growing middle class wants to buy—and mortgages aren’t hard to get. In District 1, long-term rentals for one-bedroom apartments start at around $1,050 monthly, but can be over $1,500. Main takers are foreigners, not middle-class locals.
Oddly, Bratislava’s Old Town is also home to the not-so-well-off. If buying, beware of sitting tenants. Pensioners inhabit around 3,000 apartments: they had nowhere to go when communism fell and property rights were restored. Their rents remain regulated. The Slovak Spectator says a rent-controlled 140-square-meter apartment in more upscale areas nets $151 a month. The real monthly market value for large apartments is $1,017.
Mario Antalik of R+V Realitna is scathing about U.K. companies selling some new developments in Bratislava’s outer suburbs to “investors.” They often promise high rental yields along with capital appreciation. But some run-down projects are on the market—and most locals spurn cheaply built concrete rubbish just because it’s new. The big desire is for brick.
In Mr. Antalik’s words: ‘’There’s a lot to rent that’s not rentable.’’ Tourists certainly don’t yearn to stay in the suburbs. He says renovating a 70-square-meter apartment costs $19,000 to $23,700. Converting to tourist standards generally means installing radiators, a new boiler for hot water supply, new kitchen, bathroom, and toilet, plus parquet flooring.
Steenie Harvey
Roving Europe Editor, International Living
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