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Smuggling Hub to Real Estate Boom Town
Vlora | 24 August 2009 | Besar Likmeta
The city of Vlora in southern Albania, which a decade ago was considered a hot spot for human trafficking, is reinventing itself as a vacation hub.
Stretched along a bay where the Adriatic and Ionian Sea meet, Vlora has long been considered one of the cities with the highest potential for tourism development in Albania.
However, after a breakdown of law and order in 1997, following the collapse of a series of Ponzi-investment schemes in which most of the town invested, the city became something of a frontier town.
In the late 1990s, traffickers and corrupt politicians set up a massive smuggling operation, shipping migrants and drugs on speedboats across the Adriatic to Italy.
Curbing the smuggling and its human cost became a problem for the Albanian government and a roadblock on its path to EU integraton. In response, the government launched a crackdown in 2004, and a three-year moratorium on the use of speedboats from 2006 to 2009.
Now, the city has left behind its darkest hours, and is reinventing itself, attracting more tourists every year, not only from Albania, but also from Kosovo, Macedonia and elsewhere.
Nowhere is this change more visible than in the city’s ever-changing skyline. There are hundreds of new developments and construction sites are opening up daily along the coast.
“Vlora is booming, and I don’t just say that because I am a real estate agent,” says Fiona Bosticky of Fresh Property Albania.
“The city is literally doubling in size and every time I go there there is more and more construction in the city and along the coast,” she adds.
Apartment prices start from around 550 euros per square metre in the centre, and go up to 2,400 euros per square metre for upscale projects along the coast.
On the main stretch of beachfront, apartments are priced at around 900 euros per square metre with those with a sea view for sale at around 750 euro per square metre.
According to Bosticky, who mainly provides consultancy services to foreigners interested in Albania’s property market, the main foreign buyers are Italians and Kosovo Albanians.
“Buyers from the UK and other parts of Europe don’t really understand Vlora’s potential at the moment,” she says.
“Prices for real estate on the Vlora coast are already the most expensive in Albania, and it will [only] get higher. [This is] also due to the growth of industry and the expanding port, which will mean more people looking for property,” Bosticky explains.
However, she warns that a series of large industrial developments planned on the city’s northern shore could prove problematic.
“They will need to be watched closely so that the area doesn’t get polluted,” Bosticky says. Source: Balkaninsight
