May 25th, 2009 — 10:47am
The planning permissions for apartment buildings which have been issued in the first three months of 2009 have been by 40% less than in the same period of 2008, according to the National Statistics Institute. 1470 projects have received planning permissions from January to March 2009. They are for 6530 apartments with a total area of 895 173 sq m. The number of the apartments has decreased by 49% and of the total area, also by 49% in comparison with the same period of 2008.
79 office buildings, as well as 978 other type of buildings – industrial, etc – have received planning permissions. The number of administrative buildings is by 21% less, while their total area has increased by 21%. The number of all other types of buildings has decreased by 36% and their total area has decreased by 44%.
The only tendency that continues into 2009 from the same period of 2008 is that the major part of the planning permissions for new apartment buildings have been issued in the large administrative centres of the country -
Burgas – 185, Sofia – 182, Varna – 170, and Plovdiv – 158. The number of newly planned apartments in Sofia is 1340, in Varna – 1 305, in Burgas – 896, in Blagoevgrad – 668 and in Plovdiv – 537.
Comment » | Bulgaria
February 27th, 2009 — 12:06pm
The property market in Bulgaria is blocked because of the recession. The few purchases go through in the conditions of total price chaos. There are hundreds of thousands unsold apartments on the market, only in Sofia they are 115 000. Most of them are offered at unrealistic prices. There is a significant difference between the prices of the sellers and the prices which buyers are ready to pay. In Sofia this difference is of 12 000 Euros on average.
The times of fast growth of the property market are over and only the investors who adapt quickly to the new requirements for better quality and lower profit margins will survive. Some analysts think that the normalisation of the huge profit margin will also affect other parts of the economy.
It is expected that during the recession the major buyers on the property market will be private risk investors who have free cash and the Bulgarian investors will have greater impact. Only in the last year, the share of the Bulgarian investors have increased by 37%.
The number of new planning permissions have decreased by 34% according to the National Statistics Institute.
1 comment » | Bulgaria, Property
December 9th, 2008 — 11:55am
In total 2744 new planning permissions have been issued for new buildings in the last quarter of this year in Bulgaria according to the National Statistics Institute. This is an increase by 1.85% in comparison with the previous quarter but in comparison with the last year the decrease is of 11.7%. The number of the issued planning permission in the last quarter of 2007 was 3110.
Despite the recession, again the highest number of new planning permissions has been issued on the Black Sea coast – Varna takes the first place with 380 planning permissions and Burgas takes second place with 372. Sofia is only in third place with 287, while Plovdiv is close by in forth place with 274. Among smaller towns, significant construction projects have been planned in Blagoevgrad (174 planning permissions), Pazardjik (165), Dobrich (143) and Stara Zagora (104).
Logically the highest number of new apartments have been completed in Varna – 2397, while Sofia is in the second place with 1774 and the third place is again on the Black Sea coast – Burgas with 1730 (almost as much as Sofia).
The lowest number of planning permissions have been issued in Vratsa – only 7 – and Montana – 8 – which comes to prove that the trend of poor economic development in the North-West of the country has not changed.
Concerning the planning permissions for office buildings, the administrative centre of the country – Sofia – is the leader with 22, closely followed by Plovdiv with 18.
Comment » | Bulgaria, Property
November 21st, 2008 — 1:20pm
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.
Comment » | Bulgaria, Property