LM Legal Services Blog

There won’t be any skyscrapers in the near future in Sofia. The fear of bankruptcy put on hold all projects Manhattan style in the Bulgarian capital. Some of the projects for new shopping centres have also been stopped indefinitely. Many of the investors contemplate selling their plots of land rather than pushing ahead with their plans. Others decided to make completely new projects. They think that it is safer to have their money in cash which will give them the opportunity to buy bigger plots of land in two years time.

Due to the unpredictability of the property market at the moment, nobody expects the investors to pay the fee for planning permission for the first skyscraper in Sofia, despite the fact that ten companies have expressed interest in the project. Nobody can predict the fate of the first 90 m high skyscraper in Sofia which had to be built behind the central railway station. The project is only at the planning stage and the developers have not submitted the documentation in the municipality.

Some of the investors who started building office buildings combined with apartments, now would like to change their plans because of the falling prices of apartments.

“At the moment there are several projects approved by the municipality but they have not been launched yet by the developers. Everybody waits to see which way things will go. In March of next year the first blows will come. Then we shall see who will sell and who has the real intention to build”,

said Petar Dikov, the Chief Architect of Sofia. A clear example is the shopping mall on the junction of Todor Kableshkov Blvd and Bulgaria Blvd which for the second consecutive year has not even reached the ground level stage. A Lithuanian investment company has put on hold for an indefinite period their 500 million Euro project called Sofia Acropolis. The initial plans were to build a 800 000 sq. m. of shopping and entertainment area.

However, having in mind the atrocious practice of the last years to give planning permissions virtually for any building anywhere, if the uncontrolled construction stops, there are expectations that this might be to the benefit of Sofia.