Natasa Grdinic, CEO of CMM Investment Consulting Group – In Next Two Years, New Projects on 30,000 Square Meters to Be Realized

The great boom in the real estate market in Montenegro which happened in 2007 encouraged Natasa Grdinic to found, with a partner, the company CMM Investment Consulting Group. From a company with only three employees, it has now grown into a true international holding which provides numerous services to its clients and realizes important investments throughout Montenegro. At the moment, the company is preparing projects on 30,000 m2 for the market, which will be realized in the next two years. In the coming period, they are also planning to open new offices in the world, and they will also continue actively investing in Montenegro.

The road from a small sales team to an international company was not easy, Natasa says for eKapija. However, despite two economic crises, the coronavirus pandemic and now the war in Ukraine, CMM Investment Consulting Group continues expanding its team. This year, they marked an important anniversary – 15 years of doing business.

– This year, we are celebrating 15 years from the founding of CMM Investment Consulting Group with great pride. The decision to launch a business at the time was pretty easy. The more difficult part was how. The company was launched together by my business partner Milan Milenkovic, with whom I am successfully developing the initial idea to this day, and me. That it has been successful is shown by the fact that it has already turned into a corporation. And back then, the idea was developed, we had a clear vision and it “only’ remained for us to find a way to create the initial capital in order to start doing business. It was not easy. However, the well-set values and principles on which we based our start helped us to, successfully and on our own, overcome the challenges of the founding and have very good recommendations from the very beginning – Natasa Grdinic, a co-founder and CEO of CMM Investment Consulting Group, begins her interview for eKapija.

eKapija: How has the company developed in these 15 years? What was the road from a company with only a few employees to a company which operates successfully in the international market like? In which countries do you operate?

– Since the founding of the company, we have been on a constant upward path, which we will continue in the future as well. From only three employees at the very beginning, CMM Investment Consulting Group has grown into a unique international holding, which has become a full-cycle company in the 15 years of its operations – from creating the idea and the concept of a project, to its building and realization. The company provides all real estate-related services in Montenegro and Spain. Our path was very challenging. We developed mostly during big global economic crises, which we would overcome successfully, and they continue to this day. However, CMM Investment Consulting Group is constantly enlarging its team and expanding its sphere of activities.

What contributed to the success of the holding the most was the opening of offices in London and Moscow and the founding of a part of the company, CMM Global, which connected clients and investors, through marketing, with investments and real estate in Spain and Montenegro. Now we have clients from the United Kingdom, America, Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Scandinavia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, South Africa, China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics.

eKapija: Why did you decide to step into the world of consulting, investments and real estate? Does that mean that you had recognized the right moment to start a business, considering that it was around that time that the expansion of the real estate market started, and foreign investors began discovering Montenegro as an attractive destination to invest in?

– At the moment we initiated the activities, there was indeed a big boom of real estate in Montenegro. Encouraged by the situation, in 2007, we opened the company and stepped into that challenge. The idea then was to mediate in real estate transactions. Very quickly, we were faced with, for us, the first big world crisis, which was supposed to discourage us. However, we overcame it successfully and even managed to develop the company with several additional sectors. So, I cannot say that recognizing the moment was crucial. It was more that the good strategic management of my partner and me toward overcoming the initial difficulties tipped the scales in our favor. Montenegro and its highlights were the basis for the success of it all and for attracting interested investors as a destination. It’s the same today.

eKapija: CMM Investment Consulting Group primarily deals with investments in project development and mediation in real estate transactions. Can you tell us something more about the services you provide to your clients?

– I would start with mediation in real estate transactions. That is what we started our company with. Today, we are the biggest sales team in Montenegro, and I’m sure in the Balkans as well, in this sphere of business. To our clients, we help make the best decision about how to invest their funds, whether they’re buying land, a house, an apartment, an office space, or investing in project development.

When it comes to project development, our Investment Consulting Sector takes care of our clients. After land is purchased, we offer a full cycle of services – the development of a business concept, designing based on the developed concept, obtaining all kinds of permits so as to start the construction, the construction itself and the following of the process of construction and, finally, the technical acceptance and the listing in the register. While the project realization process is taking place, the sales team prepares a sales concept as soon as during the permit stage and then does sales. That way, even during the construction, the investor makes a return on their investment at a much greater percentage than expected.

The Development Sector deals with the development of the company’s projects and the investments of CMM Investment Consulting Group. The company has a great number of projects behind it, and now we are preparing around 30,000 m2 for the market, which will be realized in the next two years. All our projects are resorts of a closed type, with numerous features such as outdoor and indoor pools, conference rooms, a spa zone with a sauna, a Turkish bath, a salt room, children’s playrooms, a relaxation-yoga zone and so on.

The Property Sector Management naturally developed from all the mentioned parts of the company. It takes care of our project, as well as the property of our clients, who leave it in our hands with full trust. The Lease Sector is a service which we’ve provided to our clients in order to best valorize our investments. Thereby, they can lease the real estate they’ve purchased through us, as part of our arrangement. In addition to the private sector, we also have hotels and apartment hotels, so we are successful in tourism as well.

Design solutions and the equipping of the units that our clients buy are the responsibility of our Design and Equipping Sector, whereas our clients, with our help, can also get an economic citizenship. CMM also has its legal team, which deals with all the legal aspects regarding our clients. With its help, they can obtain stay permits, open a company, legalize their real estate and use any service of legal consultation.

We are especially proud of the service we call CMM VIP Lifestyle Club. It covers all the services that the client can use after they become the owner of the real estate they buy with our help. CMM VIP Lifestyle Club offers the services of a concierge, who is only a click away for all the client’s questions regarding their stay in Montenegro. Whether it’s helping with the language barrier, if we’re talking foreigners, or calling a cab, organizing birthdays, or more serious issues, such as solving disputes of any kind, providing aid… everything that a person staying in Montenegro can face.

eKapija: How has the Montenegrin market developed over the years? Are we still an attractive destination for investments or has the investors’ interest perhaps dropped? Where does the majority of the investors come from and in which sectors do they most frequently invest?

– Since 2007, when I started following the market professionally, there have been several ups and downs. A considerable drop happened in 2008, due to the economic crisis in the world, as well as in 2014, for the same reason. However, the Montenegrin market has been steadily growing in the past years. The interest of investors is always present. As our company operates in many markets and promotes Montenegrin features to the whole world, the interest is varied in the geographic sense. Lately, we have been very active in the United Kingdom. Recently, we exhibited at the Place in the Sun real estate show in London.

Central Europe is also one of the markets in which we have a lot of clients. Germany is especially active in that sense. But so are other countries, such as America, France, Switzerland, Poland. They invest the most in purchasing real estate – apartments, land, houses and office spaces, and there’s also a great demand for hotels lately.

eKapija: What would you advise to potential investors, where to invest when it comes to Montenegro? Is the biggest potential still in real estate and tourism?

– Construction and tourism are currently the most developed industries here, as well as the most accessible for investments, which also makes them the most popular. However, Montenegro is a country with an incredible natural potential, so we successfully incite investments in other industries, such as farming, agriculture and manufacture.

eKapija: What is the attractiveness of Montenegro as a destination for investments reflected in, and where do you see the biggest problems that the state should work on in order to attract more investors?

– Montenegro is small, accessible and, as I’ve mentioned, rich with incredible nature and resources. It is constantly developing, which makes it very attractive for investments, not to mention the potential lying ahead of it thanks to the European integration and the projected accession to the European Union. However, there are also challenges on that path of development, of course. Great attention should be paid to the difficulties that investors face in the sense of bureaucracy, which often leads to their investments not being realized on time.

As a local investor and company, we are unfortunately not immune to such difficulties, so even now it happens that certain projects are postponed due an inadequate reaction by the institutions. In order to remain attractive as a tourism and investment destination, we need to pay a lot of attention to the road infrastructure.

Lately, a lot has been done to raise the living standard in Montenegro. There has been a change in monthly wages, but it has still not been enough to change the situation regarding young people, talented people and workers leaving the country. That is something that I think needs to be addressed intensively, so that, in the future, we would be able to meet the demands of the high standards we are striving for, while also developing our Montenegro in the right direction.

eKapija: In the past two years, we’ve had the coronavirus pandemic, the political crisis in the country, and now there’s the war in Ukraine. How have these crises reflected on the company’s operations, but also on investments in general? Especially considering that the Russian market is very significant for Montenegro and that a large number of investors comes from that country.

– I have already mentioned that we developed in crises, which was also the case during the pandemic. Our company’s team is fantastic. Together, we managed to reorganize, upgrade the company, improve the marketing, implement some new systems and strengthen the online sale of real estate, which still serves us very well, even after the pandemic. During the pandemic, we had several active projects, which we are successfully bringing to a close. I would therefore say that the challenge strengthened us and made us learn some new lessons and overcome everything successfully thanks to dedicated team work. When it comes to the most recent challenge, the war in Ukraine, it has an impact on everything. The markets of Ukraine and Russia are very important, especially for tourism, and we nearly lost them. However, thanks to diversification, which CMM strives for, but also other markets we operate in, the focus and our activities have been transferred to them, so I can say that it hasn’t reflected too much on our business.

eKapija: The abolition of the program of economic citizenship has been announced. Do you think that this will reflect on the number of investments?

– We are grateful that it lasted as long as it did, as the abolition was planned for late 2021. We hope that it will last until the end of 2022, because it has had a very positive impact on the development of the north. We now have very good hotels in Kolasin and Zabljak, which will influence the development of high tourism in those areas in the future.

eKapija: What are the plans of CMM Investment Consulting Group for the next period? Could you perhaps announce some new project or investment in Montenegro?

– CMM Investment Consulting Group never stops developing. In addition to opening new offices in the world and new sectors at the company, in the future, we will actively deal with investments in Montenegro. I hereby announce a great project called Royal View Resort & Spa, a lifestyle concept on over 20,000 m2, which will contain as many as three pools, a closed territory with a panoramic view to the whole Budva and numerous features with a five-star offer, of a residential character. The beginning of the construction is planned for the end of the year. We also plan several new projects in the Budva area, which we will announce soon.

Dragana Obradovic

CMM Investment Consulting Group

CMM Global

Nataša Grdinić

investments

real estate

real estate transactions

consulting

economic citizenship

project development

Montenegro real estate

real estate in Montenegro