A Tar Heel Makes Hay in Europe

What was Nancy Bowen Wiggins, a single mother and commercial real estate broker from Charlotte, N.C., doing at MIPIM, the International Property Market, which ended its five-day run March 11? Making money selling property in Slovenia, of all places.Turns out Ms. Wiggins has been working in the country from her Carolina home since 2000, and helped form AND DOO in October to sell property to American and other foreign investors. "There's a lot of opportunity here to build housing, offices, and retail," she said of Slovenia, which joined the European Union last May. Indeed, the North Carolina broker says she may even move there. According to Ms. Wiggins, the average per capita income in Slovenia is US$17,000, which is "four times the average in Poland and equal to that of a nice middle-class family in America." And the place is a lot like her native Tar Heel state, she added. "What they have in the way of mountains, we have in the way of a seashore," Ms. Wiggins said, "and what they have in a seashore, we have in the way of mountains."