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This has to be rated as a truly beautiful land. It is stunning. The impressive hills and valleys are clothed in huge unspoilt forests and the timber reserves are massive. The flatter areas are generally productive farm land with well tended fields stretching to the horizon planted with wheat, maize and other agricultural crops. The country is clean and the people are friendly. Many things are just as you would expect to find them in a country which as admitted to the EU a couple of years ago. That said it has a long way to go to reach the economic standards you you may well be used to. (Tesco is there in a huge way.) There are some very major differences. 1. The towns are mostly made up of huge blocks of apartments and whilst they may have been a quick fix to the local housing needs in communist times they are really awful. We have never seen so many huge apartment blocks and they are still building new ones. Many of them are grey concrete structures and they give a drab appearance to the whole place although the new structures are at least painted in more acceptable colours. These small apartments form the backbone of the domestic housing market and currently change hands at around 13,000 to 15,000 euros. (in 2006) Estate agents in these towns mainly concern themselves with selling these apartments and there is little else on offer. This is typical . . .
We forsee that as incomes rise over the years the current occupants of these flats will, at some point, want a country property with a garage and garden and a better quality of life. When that happens and a proportion of these flats are standing empty and unwanted the result could be catastrophic. Vandalism and squatters could be the norm. 2. The country villages are also very different to what you might expect. In communist times agriculture operated on a basis of collective farms. Land was seized by the state and then farmed on a communal basis. It has now largely been handed back. Consequently there are absolutely no buildings in the countryside - not even barns - as all the farmers lived in villages and travelled out to the surrounding fields every day. These villages generally comprise around a hundred farmsteads with about 50 of them on each side of the main road. The farm house itself is usually by the roadside and on a standard sized strip of land to the rear of the house are the barns, pig sties, cowsheds and a small plot of garden. They are mostly dilapidated and really grim. There is absolutely no way that you could buy one to renovate as it would stand out like a palace in a sea of grinding poverty. 3. Travelling through this beautiful countryside we turned a corner in the road to find a huge ugly old steel works which had been closed years ago and which no-one had managed to find the funds to dismantle. Quite unbelievable in such a stunning setting. More troubling was the attendant river pollution. The dirty water from past production and uncleared slag heaps was still colouring the water with a grim, grey stain. Due to papermaking which today is a very large modern industry even more rivers are a sludgy grey colour and utterly polluted. There are enormous paper mills producing paper and cardboard all along some river valleys and it is quite apparent that they have a great deal to do on the environmental front as the river colour is noticeably a darker grey after flowing through each successive town. So, it generally makes no sense to buy a high rise flat in a city other than the capital or in the High Tatras and neither would we suggest that you renovate an old farmhouse. People are poor. You need to appreciate that a bank clerk for instance would earn around 250 euros gross income per month. True that an employee in the capital Bratislava would earn a bit more but property prices soak up any difference as with most capital cities. Unemployment in some areas is very high - as much as 30% - and the state has no money to help them out so they receive only around 40 euros a month. They beg or steal the rest just to get by - they have to as they have absolutely nothing. 4. And then there are the Roma. These are the gipsies that live in most of central Europe often in squalid dwellings on the edges of towns and villages as well as in the towns themselves. There are around 500,000 living in Slovakia. Most small shops and business have substantial iron grills to protect the premises out of business hours and you can see why. So what should you buy and where should you invest? The little cottage with a bit of land in the countryside is very hard to find. There certainly wouldn't be roses round the door ! True, there are some small properties available in country areas and there are some small log cabin-type ski huts around but they are often very isolated with little infrastructure to hand and you would be a very long way from any kind of shop. There are ski resorts but for the most part they are quite small and best suited to beginners. Most Slovakians can't even afford to go skiing. We have also seen some new log cabin-type developments advertised but you need to think about the day that you want to resell. Remember that the average Slovakian family pays no more than 15,000 euros for a flat. In the Tatras mountains in the north east there are some very attractive medieval walled towns which are being renovated - albeit slowly because nobody has any money. This is where we have concentrated our efforts. The new apartments in Poprad are an attractive proposition though. We think that in the next couple of years the point will be reached where say more than half of the houses have been renovated in some of these towns and suddenly the overall appearance will make it very attractive for investors. These properties were always constructed in a secure and robust way and would be reasonably safe to leave and use as holiday properties. In conclusion, we think it is early days but if you think carefully about what you are doing you will probably do quite well in the coming years. Finally a word about the roads and driving Whilst a new road/motorway is currently being built / extended from Bratislava to the Tatras there really isn't much motorway at all. Other roads are 'reasonable' but in need of repair. We prefer to avoid motorways and were not best pleased to be stopped recently by the police at a check point which they had set up where we were fined 2.000 Koruny (About 55 Euros) for not having a motorway toll sticker on our car. "But this isn't a motorway." I protested. "It's only a dual carriageway." " It makes no difference here." was the reply so we had to pay up. Be very aware of aggressive driving on somewhat poor
roads. Look out for vehicles overtaking on the brow of a hill, blind bends and
generally trying to push you off the road. The standard of driving is not good.
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