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LEFT The couple’s third purchase was a
first-floor apartment in this beautiful stone
house in Orahovac. CENTRE For Steve and
Anita Tattershall, Montenegro ticked all the
right boxes. RIGHT from their Old Town
apartment, the second home they bought
you get this charming view of ‘Milk Square’
in the medieval town centre.

“The scenery is amazing, the air is as fresh
as you can get and the people are the
loveliest you could ever hope to meet”

The Tattershalls did, however, buy a plot of land,
which has now had apartments built on. But that still
left them with the question of where to buy property.
They carried out further investigations and noticed
one country kept popping up wherever they looked
as an up-and-coming hotspot: Montenegro.

“I found an apartment in Donji Stoliv, Kotor Bay,
right on the seafront, through Montenegro Living,”
explains Steve. “The minute I saw it I thought it
looked fantastic, so I got them to email me through
some photos in order to get a better idea.

The two-bedroom stone-built apartment that had
caught their eye was ideally situated, just eight
metres from the water’s edge, and the couple
decided to put an offer in for £42,000. But even they
didn’t realise just how fierce the competition was in
Montenegro, and how quick you have to act to
secure your property before someone else gets in.

"The agents warned us that if we didn’t put a
deposit down quickly we’d lose it. We’d had our offer
accepted but in Montenegro until you put the ten per
cent deposit down it’s not secured, and someone
else had got in and made a higher offer.

"So, to get in before the other people we had to
increase our offer and pay a deposit without seeing it
– something I always said I’d never do. But we
managed to pip them at the post, and then had to
drop everything at home and fly over straight away to
finalise the deal. It was sorted in eight hours”.

From the outset the Tattershall’s intention was to
buy an investment property to let out. But all that
changed as soon as they arrived in Montenegro and
saw its breathtaking scenery in the flesh.

"As soon as we arrived there we fell in love with the
place,” enthuses Steve. “We’ve travelled a lot but it
was by far the most amazing place we’ve ever been
to. So we decided to use the property ourselves”.

But the couple didn’t stop there. Well and truly
bitten by the Montenegro bug, and with some money
still left over, on their next visit out to Montenegro in
April 2006, the couple decided to buy another
apartment, this time in the medieval Old Town.

"We decided to try and find one to let out this
time,” explains Steve. “We saw that the prices had
already gone up a lot by April, and you get a real buzz
for it – every estate agent had English, Irish or
Russian people in it looking for property.

This time the couple used a small, friendly
Montenegrin agency to help them in their search.
Originally they had planned on buying in the Zabjlak
ski range, seeing it as a future hotspot – but a four-
hour drive on “treacherous” roads soon put paid to
that idea, and they opted for what they saw as a
much safer investment, the Old Town.

It was love at first sight when they clapped eyes on
the stone-built one-bedroom apartment, perfectly
positioned in the heart of the small town, looking
down on the winding medieval alleyways.

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