The light never ignites in the windows of 120 thousand apartments in Montenegro. They are either empty in the absence of the owners, or are permanently abandoned, writes ee24.com citing BalkanPro.ru.
The population census in 2011 revealed 58,978 empty and 51,927 temporarily occupied apartments and 7,051 abandoned apartments. As a result, the Montenegrin budget only in taxes annually loses €32 million. The situation has not spared even the Montenegrin capital Podgorica, where 12,700 apartments are empty all the time, and 3,754 are used seasonally.
As for the Montenegrin rental market of residential property, it is not transparent. Monstat statistical agency does not receive data on the number of apartments available for rent, but recently it started to collect information on the number of tenants (they should be published in mid-autumn).
Because of the failure to collect taxes on rental apartments the budget annually loses €2.7 million. The fact that the owners of the two properties (and the second is usually rented out) are required to pay an annual €200. Despite the fact that it is less than 10% of the annual rent (it varies from €200 to €600 per month), the owners of most of them refuse to pay the tax.