New-build apartments for sale in Durrës, Albania

Apartments still under construction in Durrës ask a median of €101,000, or €1,505 per square metre, with half of them between €74,600 and €167,000 and the cheapest units from €52,000. One-bedroom flats in this group have a median of €66,400, two-bedroom flats €94,200. Compare with the whole market of apartments for sale in Durrës: in most Albanian towns a flat from plans costs about the same per square metre as a finished one, because developers price for the finished building and the discount for buying early sits in the payment schedule rather than in the price list.

Buying from plans is the normal purchase in Albania, not the exception: most new supply on the coast and in Tirana is sold before the building is finished. There is no escrow. Your protection is a notarised pre-sale contract that identifies the unit on the permit plans, registered at the State Cadastre under Article 50 of Law 111/2018, which marks the unit as taken and keeps it away from the developer's creditors; payments by bank transfer in stages you can see; and a large final tranche held until the use certificate and the final deed. Our guide to buying off-plan in Albania walks through every step.

In Durrës the new buildings stand on the southern beach road from Plazh towards Golem, in the districts of Shkozet and Spitallë between the city and the motorway, and north of the city at Gjiri i Lalzit. On the beach road they are holiday complexes with pools; inland they are ordinary residential blocks for the city's own families, which keeps their prices per square metre lower.

The building permit and the plans it was issued for; the land registered in the developer's name and free of mortgages older than your contract; the developer's finished buildings, visited, not photographed; a contract with the completion date, the delay penalty, an area tolerance and a no-changes clause, because a unit that no longer matches the permit plans cannot be registered. Do not negotiate the price list, which almost never moves; negotiate the schedule and the finish. Our due diligence guide lists the documents, and our guide to the cost of buying property in Albania covers the 4 to 7% closing costs, which apply to new build as to resale.