Renting Challenges in Croatia

Finding a new place to live presented significant renting challenges in Croatia. In Croatia, most locals prefer to rent out their apartments to tourists during the summer, as this is much more lucrative than long-term rentals. Long-term rentals are generally uncommon in Croatia since many Croatians prefer to buy a property rather than rent one. As a result, you mostly find fully furnished apartments in Croatia, which worked in our favor as we were traveling with minimal luggage.

Unfortunately, time was against us because we didn't want to stay in our first apartment for more than a month, highlighting another of the renting challenges in Croatia. Although the location and furnishings were fine, it wasn't clean, and I felt a bit disgusted every day. Especially our cat Levi, who loves to explore every nook and cranny, would come out covered in dust almost every time. We also couldn't spend too much on rent because we needed the money to find and buy a boat as soon as possible.

After almost two weeks of fruitless searching online and with local real estate agents, our nerves were frayed, and I wondered what we might have overlooked regarding the renting challenges in Croatia. We started asking locals more about our search. Then we got a tip from a nice lady in a real estate office to try Njuškalo. I was already familiar with similar private-to-private websites from Germany, and with the help of Google Translate, we were able to navigate the Croatian platform. But then I had another idea to overcome the renting challenges in Croatia.

In the German ads, I sometimes found Croatians who offered their holiday apartments. I hoped one of them might help us and ask around in their circle if anyone had an apartment available, thereby solving one of our renting challenges in Croatia. To my great surprise, we were actually lucky. The mother-in-law of one landlord had an apartment that had recently become available. It was supposed to be rented out during the high summer season, but if we took the apartment, the elderly lady wouldn't have to clean so many apartments, which would relieve her. It sounded good and like a resolution to our renting challenges in Croatia.

The next day, we had two viewings and were a bit more relaxed since we were sure one of the two apartments would be acceptable, addressing our renting challenges in Croatia. We saw both apartments. One was quite close to Split and built into the hillside. It was a bit older, but we would have had plenty of space – about 80 square meters, I would estimate. The apartment at the mother-in-law's was a bit further out but much nicer. It was modernly furnished, with a private balcony and air conditioning. Our daughter Amelie had her own room, and we were only a 10-minute walk from the beach. The best part was, we could stay as long as we wanted, overcoming our final renting challenges in Croatia.

We could hardly believe our luck. After an intense search, everything fell into place at the last possible moment – just one day before our lease was up, solving our renting challenges in Croatia. We moved into our new, temporary home with all our belongings that very same day. We just hoped our landlords would be nice since they lived in the same house.