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Why Kosovo’s Diaspora Should Invest in Businesses, Not Just Real Estate

Ortaku · 31 October 2026 · 6 min read

Every August, the roads into Kosovo fill with cars on German and Swiss plates. People come home to see their parents, attend weddings, and very often to check on an apartment.

That apartment is one of the most rational purchases a person living abroad can make. It’s tangible, a relative can keep an eye on it, and it feels like a stake in a place you never really left. Multiply that decision by a few hundred thousand families, though, and you get an economy with a strange shape: a great deal of new housing, and far too few new employers.

This post makes a simple argument. The diaspora has real capital and a real wish to help. Some of what now goes into property would do more good, and could earn a better return, if it went into operating businesses.

How much money we’re talking about

At least half a million Kosovars live abroad, mainly in Germany and Switzerland. The true figure may be well above that. Kosovo’s statistics agency has said more than 600,000, and the GAP Institute counts about 542,000 people of Kosovar origin in Germany alone.

Their financial weight is hard to overstate:

  • Remittances reached €1.35 billion in 2024. On World Bank figures, that’s around 17% of GDP. The OECD, working from a different GDP estimate, puts it closer to 13%. On either number, few European economies lean on their people abroad to the same degree.
  • Total inflows are larger still. The Governor of the Central Bank of Kosovo has put the diaspora’s total contribution above €3 billion in a single year, once spending during visits and investment are included.
  • Foreign direct investment reached €1.03 billion in 2025, according to the GAP Institute, with Germany and Switzerland the two largest sources. Over a recent three-year period, 55% of FDI came from Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Official statistics don’t separate diaspora investment from other foreign investment, so nobody can give you a precise diaspora share. But when most of the money comes from the countries where the diaspora lives, and goes into the apartments the diaspora buys, the picture is clear enough.

Where it goes

Of that €1.03 billion in 2025, €770 million went into real estate. That’s 75%. It isn’t a one-year anomaly either: a Riinvest Institute economist put the figure at about 72% over three years, and the central bank’s data showed roughly 67% in 2022.

The IMF has described the same pattern in its reports on Kosovo, noting that the diaspora contributes mainly through remittances and real estate.

So the usual description of Kosovo as “short of capital” needs a qualification. Capital arrives every year, in large amounts. It’s the destination that’s narrow.

What a business does that a building doesn’t

A new building creates real work while it’s going up: builders, electricians, suppliers. Then it’s finished, and it mostly sits there. If it’s only used in August, it may not even produce rent.

A company keeps going. It pays wages every month, trains people, buys from other local firms, pays taxes and, if it’s good enough, sells abroad and brings in money from outside the country. The OECD reports that small and medium-sized enterprises make up 99.8% of Kosovo’s registered enterprises and 79% of its employment. If you want to change what the economy looks like in ten years, this is where it happens.

It also speaks to the reason so many people left in the first place. Young people don’t emigrate because there’s a shortage of apartments. They emigrate because of the shortage of jobs that pay well and lead somewhere. Every company that grows from 15 people to 40 gives a few more of them a reason to stay.

The investor’s side of the argument

Goodwill isn’t a strategy, and we wouldn’t ask anyone to treat their savings as charity. The case has to work for the investor too, and it can, for three reasons.

You earn from operations as well as from price rises. A property pays you rent and whatever the market does to its value. A good business can pay you a share of profits that grow as the company grows. Your return depends less on someone paying more for a similar flat next year.

You can influence the outcome. There’s only so much you can do to improve an apartment. A company can change its pricing, enter a new market, fix its purchasing, or finally start exporting to the country you live in. Many diaspora investors know how things are done in German or Swiss firms, and that knowledge is often worth as much to the company as the cash.

You’re not joining a crowd. When three-quarters of foreign investment heads for a single asset class, that’s where the competition is. Fewer people are looking at a profitable mid-sized distributor in Peja. Less competition can mean more sensible prices, though you should always check that for yourself.

The honest part

We’re not going to pretend these are the same risk. They aren’t.

  • A company can fail, and you can lose everything you put in. An apartment rarely goes to zero.
  • A stake in a private company is hard to sell. You may be in it for many years.
  • Accounts can be incomplete, and what you see may not be the whole picture.
  • If you hold a minority stake without the right agreements, you may have little practical power.
  • It takes attention. It’s much harder to do well from a distance than buying a flat.

Those are good reasons not to put all your savings into one company, and to take professional advice before you invest anything. They’re not reasons to stay out altogether. Most of them can be reduced through careful checks, good governance and proper legal structure, which is exactly the work most small investors have no one to help them with.

What’s actually stopping people

We don’t think it’s unwillingness. It’s that nobody can see what’s available.

If you want to buy an apartment in Prishtina, you can walk past the building. If you want to invest in a company in Prishtina, how do you find out who’s looking for capital? Who checks the numbers? Who draws up an agreement that protects you from a thousand kilometres away?

Founders have the mirror image of that problem. They know investors exist, somewhere in Germany or Switzerland, and they have no way of reaching them.

That gap is why Ortaku exists. We connect founders, owners and investors, and then we stay involved through governance, deal structure and finding the right lawyers.

You don’t have to sell the apartment. Just consider whether the next euro should buy another one.

Sources

This article is general information, not investment advice.

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