A recent project of the Ministry of State Administration and Administrative Reform called Comprehensible Bulgaria has been started with a view to make life of non-Bulgarian speaking visitors to Bulgaria easier.
All of this would have been good if the streets named after non-Bulgarians were translated as the name is in fact and not to some sort of interpretation like:
The person in question is James Bourchier and it is good that soon after this a new sign was placed…
Anyway, it is still widely used another version of that name “James Baucher” so you need to double check where exactly you are going in Sofia. If that does not help then learning Bulgarian is probably the only option left;)
An article from yesterday in Pari (Money) Newspaper reports that the prices of the apartments in Sofia reached the top and exceed the amounts that the buyers are willing to pay. This wise discovery is made by the executive director of Address Real Estate Katya Tzenova.
Finally, they managed to discover that the greed for commissions will kill the market and they cannot push the prices up endlessly. It was very widely used by the estate agents to insist that certain properties can be sold for a price that is sometimes 30% or 40% above the initial asked. That is why I am still waiting Address to sell one property which they “discovered” to worth 20% more than the initially asked price. Well I am still waiting and it is good that it is not only them who are selling it 
Recent article in The Sofia Echo comments the situation with the office space for rent in the city. Naturally, the construction boom will not leave this area of the real estates intact and after overbuilding in resorts the next area is the office space.
For many of this new developments the dilemma “half empty of half full” does not exist at all since they are committed to become fully empty even before they are started but obviously the motives behind building them are not purely financial. Sometimes bankruptcy is deliberately sought by the developers in order to resell the project on more attractive price… It is needless to say the more than half of so called office buildings do not offer anything different than the regular apartment so popular and used as offices in the centre of the city while at the same time offered at prices completely unreasonable for the areas where they are located.
Bansko resort opens summer season reports BulgariaInside.
The Mayor of the town - Alexander Kravarov discovered that “Over-construction is another major obstacle”. Guess who issued the permissions for it? After being the “good guy” in the previous mandate after his re-election the famous Mayor decided to play the “bad guy” while Bansko is getting uglier and uglier. Constantly ongoing construction works will not attract many tourist and for sure will not make those who visited the town to come back. Apart from the construction works the infrastructure is still in a very “strange” status which in itself is another reason for big disappointment in the tourists.
Recent rumours about the bankruptcy of one of the banks in Bulgaria - First Investment Bank made lots of their clients to withdraw their savings from the bank and to close accounts.
As a reply the Executive Director Ms. Maya Georgieva said that “who believes in rumours should take his money back”. Lady, every schoolboy knows that you do not have all their money. I am not sure what the situation is, but if you continue with such statements you might successfully bankrput the bank… Good luck!
Poligraphic services buildings in Sofia to become class A offices states recent article published at propertywisebulgaria.com.
Being around this part of Sofia (Dimitar Blagoev Printing House) almost every day it is not hard to notice how “easy” is to access it by car. Bringing another 241 cars in the area (at least) will make the things even worse and the experience from going to work there will not be so much “class A”.
It is strange why the Municipality of Sofia and its Chief Architect still allow such developments but probably the reasons for this should be looked somewhere else. No wonder why the city is empty on all holidays - one hour driving during the working days can make you want to disappear from here at first possible chance. At the same time instead of improving the traffic and trying to make the citizens and visitors of Sofia happy the local authorities are allowing building on every possible space.
I am writing this further to a recent comment on another post related to buying process in Bulgaria.
In fact the Off Plan Survival Guide was written some time ago but I would like to point your attention to it as it is a good starting point for investment in Bulgaria.
In any case the first two points from it are very important:
1. Use a lawyer! This is the most important step. Do not use the lawyer recommended by the estate agent. Search on the internet for lawyers or ask a friend but do not even think of buying property without a lawyer.
2. Do not pay any reservation fee, deposits or other advanced payments without making sure that you will get a full refund in case that for whatever reason you decide later on not to buy. It is good also any such documents to be reviewed by a lawyer before you commit.
Inexperienced investors and incompetent local authorities are the reason for the fiasco in the real estate sales in some resorts in Bulgaria according to the chief of UniCredit Bulbank Levon Hampartzoumian.
The person with hardly pronounceable name believes that most of the popular resorts will suffer difficulties which will reflect also on the Banks that financed the projects. In the same line of thoughts it can be said that if there was not enough funding then this fiasco would not happen, which means that the “competent” bankers should line up with the investors and municipal administration.
A recent article in Capital newspaper discusses the reasons that led to decrease in real estate sales in the last year. It is not a secret that after the initial boom currently there are about 20 000 apartments for sale in Bansko and over 200 000 on the Black Sea. Their number is increasing every day while the sales are going down more and more.
Funnily, one of the companies that contributed the most for this – BulgarianProperties is asked to analyse the situation explain it with the mass overbuilding in the main resorts. However, it was BulgarianProperties who were selling off-plan properties so off the plan that some never materialised and this customer’s attitude is one of the main reasons for the mass decrease in sales. There are too many stories of “successful investments” recently.
The main conclusion of the article is that currently the supply is exceeding dramatically the demand for properties in Bulgaria and now especially after the crisis on the real estate market in USA probably it is not so wise to invest in real estates. It is again no secret that most of the projects are built with financing from Banks and for their repayment the developers rely entirely on the sales so soon the bubble will start to shrink. Who is about to be caught inside? We’ll see…
Translation of this wise thought. There is lot of truth about Bulgarian way of making fun.
