Sea-view houses and villas for sale in Durrës, Albania

Houses and villas advertised with a sea view in Durrës ask a median of €500,000, or €1,675 per square metre of living space, with half of them between €270,000 and €750,000 and the cheapest around €180,000. A view roughly doubles the price per metre of a house in Albania, because most of the coast is flat and the first row is apartment blocks, so a hillside plot with an open line to the water is the scarcest thing a house can have. Compare with the ordinary houses for sale in Durrës to see what the view itself is worth.

23% of these houses are still under construction, usually villas in a developer's complex sold from plans; the rest are existing houses, from stone village houses on the Riviera to modern villas on the hills above Vlorë and Durrës.

Around Durrës the sea-view houses are of two kinds: villas on the Currila hill and the ridge above the old town, where the view is over the whole bay, and new villa complexes at Gjiri i Lalzit north of the city, where the houses stand in rows behind a long beach and the view depends on the row. The villages of the hinterland have houses a few minutes from the sea but without a view, at a fraction of the price.

Three things matter more for a house than for a flat. The land: a foreigner buys a house and its plot directly when the plot is construction land, while agricultural land and bare plots within about 200 metres of the shore are held through a company or a lease, so the cadastral classification decides what you can sign. Legalisation: a house built after 1991 without a permit, or extended without one, cannot be transferred the way a registered one can. The view itself: ask what can be built on the plots between the house and the sea. Our due diligence guide lists the documents, and our guide to house prices in Albania gives the medians town by town.