The Re-Pricing of Place

For most of the modern era, property markets have been organised around a single assumption: work dictates where people live.

Cities grew because employment clustered. Transport networks, housing density, and land values all reflected proximity to economic activity. Even lifestyle-driven purchases—second homes, coastal retreats, ski apartments—were framed as discretionary, secondary to the gravity of work.

That hierarchy is loosening. Not because people have stopped working, but because the cost of remaining economically connected has fallen sharply. As that cost approaches zero, something else begins to matter more—and it is already being priced in.
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Re-Pricing Is Already Underway

The most important shift of the past five years is not technological but behavioural.

Between 2020 and 2024, remote work shifted from exception to norm for globally mobile professionals—and crucially, remained there after restrictions ended. Fewer people needed to be in a specific place, five days a week, to remain economically relevant.

Residential markets began to diverge.

Work-centric global cities saw muted or negative real growth, while scenic, lower-density regions—coastal, alpine, climatically mild—experienced strong appreciation. This was not confined to one country. It appeared across southern Europe, parts of North America, and select mountain regions worldwide.

Buyers were no longer optimising for commute time. They were optimising for life quality, provided connectivity remained intact.
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What Changed—and What Didn't

This shift is often described as cultural revolution. In reality, it is narrower and more precise.

People did not stop working. Income did not become universal. Cities did not lose their economic or cultural relevance.

What changed was optionality.

A growing cohort of professionals found they could earn remotely or semi-remotely, coordinate across time zones, travel less frequently but more intentionally, and decouple daily life from a single employment hub.

This did not apply to everyone. But it applied to enough people—and enough capital—to move markets.
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The Expanding Optional Class

The most interesting demographic is neither the ultra-wealthy nor a hypothetical future supported by universal income.

It is the expanding middle of people with sufficient stability to choose.

These buyers are not maximising income at all costs. They are maximising utility: health, environment, daily experience, access to nature, and long-term resilience.

They still care about value, liquidity, and downside protection. But they will trade economic intensity for meaningful improvement in how life is lived.

This explains why demand has concentrated in places offering high life quality without severing economic connection—not in remote isolation, and not in dense financial centres.
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What Gets Re-Priced When Work Detaches From Place

When proximity to employment weakens as the dominant variable, other factors move up the value stack.

The same attributes repeatedly attract premium pricing: natural beauty experienced daily, not seasonally; access to outdoor activity—walking, swimming, sailing, skiing, cycling; clean air and water; human-scale towns with genuine walkability; climatic moderation; and places that support health rather than merely accommodate leisure.

These were always desirable. What has changed is their economic weight.

They are no longer luxuries layered on top of work-centric life. They are becoming the foundation around which life is organised.
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A Laboratory, Not a Destination

Over two decades of observing and advising international buyers, the stated motivation for purchase has shifted.

Consider Montenegro's Bay of Kotor—not as recommendation, but as test case.

Between the mid-2000s and mid-2020s, residential values in this region increased severalfold despite only incremental infrastructure changes and limited large-scale development. What changed most was not the built environment, but the buyer profile.

Early demand was driven by yield, price arbitrage, and frontier-market speculation. Over time, that gave way to purchasers prioritising lifestyle, scenery, climate, and long-term optionality—with economic connectivity assumed rather than questioned.

Buyers were not paying for transformation. They were paying for the right to live well without disconnecting from the wider world.

This pattern is not unique. It is simply easier to observe in smaller, contained markets.
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AI as Accelerant, Not Origin

Artificial intelligence does not create this trend. It sharpens it.

By reducing coordination costs, automating routine work, and further loosening the tie between effort and location, AI reinforces an already-established direction. It makes geographic optionality cheaper, more scalable, and more durable.

But the repricing preceded the technology.
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Why Cities Don't Collapse

None of this implies the end of cities.

Global centres of finance, culture, education, and political power will remain highly valuable—and increasingly polarised. What changes is not their existence, but their role.

Cities become places of concentration and intensity. Scenic, liveable regions become places of continuity and balance. The middle ground—living somewhere primarily because work requires it—narrows.
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The Timing Question

If this repricing reflects structural shift rather than temporary cycle, the most important question is not whether it will continue, but when it becomes obvious.

Markets rarely price optionality until it is widely visible. By the time certainty arrives, asymmetry is usually gone.

As the cost of remaining economically connected continues to fall, the value of places combining life quality with connectivity will not rise evenly—but it is unlikely to reverse.

The decision facing buyers is less philosophical than practical: what is the cost of waiting for certainty, and who bears it?

Peter Flynn moved to Montenegro in 2005 and began working in the country's property market as a private speculator. He established New Territory DOO in 2006 to formalise his operations after the country gained independence. With two decades of experience guiding international buyers through Montenegro's property market and residency processes, he specialises in the Tivat and Bay of Kotor area. Working alongside business partner Maša Flynn, NT Realty (which takes its name from the New Territory holding company) has helped hundreds of buyers from the US, UK, Australia, and beyond navigate Montenegro's evolving legal and regulatory landscape. Peter maintains close working relationships with local lawyers, notaries, and government officials, providing clients with current, practical guidance rooted in on-the-ground experience.