According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors last year’s report, the great European property price boom is over. Only Cyprus and Iceland saw house prices outstrip the previous year’s performance, which called the end of the European property gold rush. In Bulgaria, property investment is gradually slowing down due to a number of reasons, from high prices to environmental abuse. What is the next investment hit going to be about?
Yekaterina
Buying property in Bulgaria can be very tricky. The property can look like a luxury estate on the picture, but turn out to be a hovel in reality. The prices for foreigners are often double or triple of those offered to locals. Not to mention what one has to go through to legally own a house (which frequently requires opening a company for a foreigner). How to avoid making a bad property investment in Bulgaria?
Yekaterina
Imagine you are buying or renting a property in Bulgaria. Would you post a classified ad or would you rather go for a real estate broker to arrange it all for you? I’d think both approaches have their pros and cons, and yes, it would all depend on the individual property’s parametres, but what would your course of action be like?
A ward of warning - a friend of mine recently paid a large amount of money to have a flat he wanted to buy removed from the ads of a couple of real estate agencies. To his surprise, a week later the flat was still there and was even sold to someone else. You would say he acted foolishly as he didn’t as much as bother to get a receipt or anything in writing. Have you had a similar experience in which you feel you have been deceived?
How do you choose your developer? What is it that matters to you - the opinion/experience of a friend, the market share or a 3D visualisation you saw on a billboard? Or maybe it is something completely different?
If you own an apartment in the centre of Sofia, consider the offer of real estate agents looking for fully furnished flats to rent out to visitors who’d prefer these to hotels. The money short-term visitors are prepared to pay may be worth the effort of hiring a cleaning lady and covering all the bills. Or is it?
posted by Ani Ivanova
Rents in Sofia, Burgas and Varna have seen a marked rise in recent months, a property manager is telling me. Has to do with the steady growth of property prices, he explains. Those who have not solved the above dilemma might be worried, or am I wrong?
posted by Ani Ivanova
The Bulgarian property boom has brought lots of British families to Bulgaria. During my three years here I noticed a new phenomenon emerging: “English” villages popping up where enclaves of British immigrants are making their homes. (See Vagabond 05 for photographer Darren Zlatareff’s Picture Essay about the British communities in Avren and Elhovo in Eastern Bulgaria). Is this a good thing? Perhaps it’s only natural that expatriates should want to group together for mutual support in their new surroundings, but do these enclaves stop expats from integrating into the Bulgarian community? Would you choose to buy property in one of these areas? Perhaps you have - what are your experiences?
by Lucy Cooper
