By Holiday Home Times · Living Your Dream Series
David Whitmore, 54, is a civil engineer. Clare Whitmore, 51, runs a small graphic design practice. They live in Bath, England, and in 2022 bought a stone villa above the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro for €185,000. We spoke to them about three summers of ownership.
How did you find Montenegro?
David: We'd been looking at Greece, Croatia, Portugal — the usual circuit. Somewhere in early 2021 I read a piece about the Bay of Kotor that described it as the fjord the Adriatic forgot. We looked it up and were immediately struck by the photos. The mountains dropping straight into the water, the walled towns, the quality of the light in the photographs. We booked a week in Kotor town in September 2021 to have a look.
Clare: We were honestly quite nervous. We didn't know anyone who'd bought there. We had a vague sense it was ‘developing’ but not what that meant in practice — which turned out to be a mixed picture. Parts of it are very developed, parts are completely untouched. We were immediately in love with it.
What did you actually find?
David: We looked at properties with a local estate agent for three days. The prices were genuinely much lower than comparable properties in Croatia or Greece. €150,000–250,000 bought a stone house that would have been €400,000 or more in Dalmatia. The buildings were older, the infrastructure was less developed, but the scenery was arguably more dramatic.
Clare: We found the villa on the third day. It needed some work — a bathroom modernisation, the kitchen was quite basic, the garden was overgrown. But the bones were beautiful. Old stone, original oak beams, a terrace with a direct bay view. We offered in November 2021 and completed in March 2022.
What was the bureaucratic reality?
David: More complicated than we expected, but not impossible. Montenegro is not in the EU, which actually simplified some things — there's no EU bureaucracy to navigate. But the property registration process was slow. The title deed took about four months to come through after completion. We'd been warned this was normal, which helped manage our anxiety about it, but it was still four months of checking emails from a local lawyer.
Clare: The language barrier was the most frustrating part. Very little was available in English, and even basic things like utility setup required our lawyer to translate and accompany us. We found one lawyer in Kotor who was very good — responsive, honest about what would take time, didn't overcomplicate anything. She was worth every euro of her fee.
Montenegro property tip: budget for a good local lawyer and a patient relationship with the process. Title registration timelines of 2–5 months are normal. Factor this into your purchase timeline, especially if you want to be in the property for the first summer after buying.
What's the rental income reality?
David: We rent it for about eight weeks a year — six in summer, two in shoulder season. We net approximately €12,000 a year from that, after management fees and cleaning. That covers our running costs (property tax, utilities, maintenance, insurance) with a couple of thousand left over. We never expected it to be an investment, so we're satisfied.
Clare: The market has got more competitive since 2022. There are a lot more listings on Airbnb in the Bay of Kotor area than there were. Our manager keeps telling us to add a plunge pool to stay competitive — which we're considering for 2027. That said, our occupancy has been consistent. Stone houses with bay views at a sensible price point still have an audience.
Three summers in — what would you do differently?
David: I'd have negotiated harder on the price. We were nervous buyers in an unfamiliar market and we accepted the asking price because we didn't want to lose it. With hindsight, there was more flexibility in the seller's position than we realised.
Clare: I'd have budgeted properly for the renovation. We underestimated the kitchen cost by about 40% and the garden took twice as long as the contractor said it would. Classic, but still — build in 25% contingency on any renovation, especially when you're managing it remotely.
Would you do it again?
Clare: Without hesitation. We've spent six weeks there this summer already. The community is warm — there's a small group of British and Dutch buyers in our village who all bought around the same time, and we've become genuine friends with some of them and with local families. That wasn't something we anticipated when we bought, and it's become one of the things we value most.
David: The thing people don't tell you about buying a holiday home is that it changes how you use your time in a way that's hard to predict until it happens. We used to go to different places every summer. Now we go back to the same place, and the place reveals itself slowly, over time. I think that's the point of it.