LM Legal Services Blog

Analysts expect that 2012 will be again the year of the buyers. Most buyers will be first-timers. The hope is that those who have savings or free money will be bold enough to spend them on properties because of the attractive prices.

The property prices in Bulgaria will continue to fall in 2012, however the analysts do not dare to give forecasts about the amount to which the prices will drop. The expectations are that the buyers and the tenants will dictate the property prices. Most of the buyers of holiday apartments and houses will be Russian, while the buyers of all other types of property will be mostly Bulgarians.  The expectations are that in 2012 cheap properties not exceeding 55 000 Euros will be in demand.  Although the number of the property sales in 2011 has increased by 30% in comparison with 2010 unlike a year ago, now the buyers are spending mostly on cheap properties.

Concerning the survival of the construction companies, the European money will be of prime importance for many of them.  In just one year the income of the construction industry has shrunk from 11.7 billion levs to 9.9 billion levs in 2011. Big companies will focus on the construction of apartment buildings and private investors will commission them for the construction of individual buildings. The construction of big shopping centres will continue.

The money from the European programmes will be spent for the reconstruction of hospitals, schools and cultural monuments.  The greatest amount of the European money will go for the development of infrastructure.  Some of these projects have to be completed in 2012.

The Mail On Sunday, 20 November 2011

A group of Britons who faced arrest and threats of violence during a two-year dispute over the ownership of flats they had bought in a Bulgarian ski resort have finally won their case.
The 70 investors have gained access to the apartment block in the former Communist state as well as securing the title deeds to their flats, which they had purchased for £6 million.
The resolution of the dispute is considered so significant that Britain’s most senior diplomat in the country will attend a party next weekend at the All-Seasons leisure complex in the town of Bansko, 120 miles south of the capital Sofia.
The owners were denied entry after an influential local businessman took over the entire development and refused to hand over the keys.
The Britons staged a mass break-in to seize possession of the block but in a series of court cases their pleas for justice were ignored.
Financial adviser Paul Hassall, from Horsham, West Sussex, who was arrested twice by Bulgarian police during the campaign to get the flats back, said: ‘The British Consul says this is the first time a group of British victims of property crime in Bulgaria have united and won their case.’

The number of property sales in Bulgaria has increased for a third consecutive quarter in comparison with last year – 54 997 sales in comparison to 46 968 sales in the same quarter of 2010. The total number of the property sales in 2011 so far is 157 273, while in the whole of 2010 they were 182 376.

The internet statistics of Yandex, the Russian equivalent of Google, show that the Russians used the phrase “property in Bulgaria” in their online searches and Bulgaria was topping the list of their searches of properties abroad.  This is not surprising as the Russians have bought more than 200 000 properties in Bulgaria in the last four years.

The prices of apartments in Sofia have decreased by 1/3 since 2008 due to the recession. If four years ago a one-bedroom apartment in the Bulgarian capital could sell for 78 302 Euros on average, at the moment it sells for 54 073 Euros. Only in the last year the prices have dropped by 9,78% .

However, according to the Land Registry, the total number of the sales in the first half of 2011 was only 102 276, in comparison to 73 867 sales in the same period of the last year. This is an increase of 27,78%. Most of the sales, about 25%, have taken place in the biggest Bulgarian cities: Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas and Stara Zagora.