The long and winding road

The Serbian real estate market’s 15 minutes of fame are not over. The global crisis is clearly affecting the country’s progress, but the long-term figures still look promising. We are here to stay, the majority of the international players declare. Here is why Mladen Petrov At a business mixer at the Warsaw Hyatt Regency hotel, three businessmen in sharp suits, with pints of Guinness in their hands – it’s St Patrick’s day after all – are talking business. “I’ve just returned from Serbia,” seems to be the perfect conversation opener. The two most used words during the conversation are growth and opportunities. Someone mumbles for a second about the red-tape in Serbia. Sounds promising, is the general conclusion. But do these words – growth and opportunities – still  accurately describe the Serbia of April 2009? It seems that, despite the global downturn, Serbia, after the bitter wars of the 1990s, is hungry for more. And it is now dreaming