Number of Abandoned Apartments in Serbia Grows – Each Fifth Apartment in Cities on Average

A total of 3,600,000 apartments has been enumerated in Serbia, of which slightly over 70% are occupied. Compared to the 2011 census, the number of abandoned apartments increased around 10,000 to 123,000 – most of them in West, South and East Serbia. What has the census shown in the field?

The census takers listed those apartments or houses in which nobody lives, which nobody visits or uses for vacation, as abandoned.

– What we wanted to determine with this census are the apartments in villages, that is, the abandoned houses. There are 20% abandoned apartments in urban areas, which means that each fifth apartment was enumerated in an urban area – points out Dejana Djordjevic of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia.

According to the law, along with the list of the tenants, the head of the building also needs to run the list of rented apartments. In practice, they say, it’s impossible. Those who manage buildings explain that they have no right to enter apartments, or check who lives in them, but only to represent their interests in maintaining the building.