Bulgaria.

[zheer]

  I've heard buying a house in Bulgaria is very affordable, so thinking about buying a house in Bulgaria to live in the near future, your average house in london costs quater of million, so the idea of buying a house in London is  unlikly.
   Does anyone know much about Bulgaria, are people friendly, am getting excited about the idea of moving into the wild, mountins, trees, rivers ahhhhhhhhh.     

[thalbergmad]

Well, if you wait a few months, you will find out what the Bulgarians are like because half of them will be coming to England. Then there will be lots of cheap houses to buy over there.

Worth bearing in mind that whilst houses are cheap, the average wage is considerably less than the London average.

Indeed parts of the country are beyond beautiful. My brother went skiing there and assured me that it was far prettier than any of France he had visited.

Might go out there myself.

Thal

[wishful thinker]

Zheer,

Try Italy. Abruzzo (where I have a house) has everything, and you can get a good house well under 100k.  pm me if you want more info 

[zheer]

Indeed parts of the country are beyond beautiful. My brother went skiing there and assured me that it was far prettier than any of France he had visited.

Might go out there myself.

Thal

  Really , how cool is that, am seriously considering it, i have no option as you know buying a property in london is a costly thing. LOL might see you there. You know thal i is lived in the UK for over 21 years.


   Hi wishful thinker, that sounds cool. Italy is very cool, but one step at a time. Less than 100K, waw thats really cool.

[elspeth]

My boss owns a house in Bulgaria, he says it's wonderful but you have to be a mite careful about banks over there, they've screwed up a couple of times during the time he's held accounts there. But banks do that over here, too, so it's nothing you don't have a good chance of happening here!

As with any other country though, learn the language first - at least enough to be polite to the locals. If they can see you're making an effort, they will too.

Alternatively, if you want cheaper property you could move north, it's not so grim as they make out... a friend of mine worked for a big chemical company in London who were wanting cheaper premises. She suggested they move north and the reply was 'But Bristol's nearly as bad as London.' They were genuinely shocked when she said 'Erm, I was thinking more along the lines of Newcastle...'

[pianolearner]

  I've heard buying a house in Bulgaria is very affordable, so thinking about buying a house in Bulgaria to live in the near future, your average house in london costs quater of million, so the idea of buying a house in London is  unlikly.
   Does anyone know much about Bulgaria, are people friendly, am getting excited about the idea of moving into the wild, mountins, trees, rivers ahhhhhhhhh.     

What a coincidence! I have just recently bought a holiday apartment in Sunny Beach on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria.

https://www.sunny-beach.com/

I am now looking into buying a rural property.

My advice Zheer is to VISIT if you are serious about buying. I have wanted to buy in Bulgaria for the last 5 years but didn't have the guts to do it. I visited the country for the 1st time this year in August and liked it enough to commit to buying. I visited again in September to sign the final contract.

There are no cheap charter flights to the main coastal cities Varna and Bourgas now, but they will start up again around March. You should be able to fly to Sofia all year round.

I used Bulgaria Air

https://www.air.bg/en/

Good luck and remember, do your OWN research.

[zheer]

.

https://www.sunny-beach.com/

  Many thanks pianolearner, so you own a property by the beach ,great stuff. You know thats a very good investment. Just looking through the websight makes me think thats its very traditional type of place.

[pianistimo]

you see!  i knew zheer was rich.  he is now buying a house, albeit in bulgaria.  bulgarian women are very very beautiful.  they are supposed to have the best skin in the world.

[ahinton]

Property prices in many parts of Bulgaria are rising fast, because certain people from outside that country have been advised that it's a good idea to buy there and they've taken that advice. Romania is even cheaper. Both countries are due to join the EC soon, so they'll start to receive ample subsidies from Bruxelles, which should - in theory, at least - put something of a firework under their respective economies. That said, there are many - and I mean many - other countries also wishing to join the EC - Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, most of the old Soviet republics; some pundits accordingly predict that it will only be a matter of time before Morocco (whose wish to join is already well known) is joined in its Euro-enthusiasm by other north African and Middle Eastern states (after all, Turkey has been agog to get on the Eurpoean bandwagon for years - and let's not forget that it has a border with Iraq). Property prices in popular parts of Morocco are already rocketing (Marrakech, Agadir, etc.). Many people blame the Brits for property price hikes everywhere - as in "just let the Brits move in and, before you know it, the locals can no longer afford the newly inflated property prices"; well, it's happened within the UK and, since so many Brits want to get out of their overpriced and overtaxed country, it continues to spread like cancer. There is already a joke circulating at the moment that the best places in Greater Europe to buy property (from a longer-term investment standpoint) are Iraq and Afghanistan, because once the armies qua armies finally leave those countries, some of their members might well buy up properties there to do up with a view to making a "killing" of a rather different kind - i.e., once the Brits start buying into Afghanistan, the prices will rocket and the locals will no longer be able to afford, etc. etc. Yes - leave it to those goddam' Brits and, given time, once Uzbekistan finally becomes an EC member, someone will decide it's a ripe market for property exploitation; after all, if you really put your mind to it, where isn't?

Caveat emptor, however; be warned that Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Morocco (the next nations in line for EC accession) are a long way yet from having most of the kinds of infrastructural substance to which most people in so-called "developed" countries like Britain have become accustomed. This kind of proprety market is for dedicated speculators although, that said, it is surely fair to state that all property purchase - even of one's own home - is inherently speculative financially, for all that the rule of thumb has long been that one should not, first and foremost, consider one's own home as "an investment".

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

you see!  i knew zheer was rich.  he is now buying a house, albeit in bulgaria.  bulgarian women are very very beautiful.  they are supposed to have the best skin in the world.

Your logic - or what appears to parade as such - seems to be flawed, insofar as that, if "zheer" is really "rich", why is he not buying property in a country like Switzerland rather than one like Bulgaria where the values of some places have yet to feel the full effects of the steamrollering crush of British property speculators? Perhaps he's just trying to get on the property ladder rather than being already rich.

By the way, the freehold on a double garage (i.e. with space for two cars) here in the city of Bath sold at auction a few months ago for £61,500 (that's about US$115,000); it went to a speculator who has since sold it by private treaty for £73,000 - a gross profit of £11,500. So who needs to go to Bulgaria to make a killing on the property market, then?

Best,

Alistair

[pianowelsh]

Be carefull Bulgarian authorities can be VERY funny about land laws and Ive heard of people have purchased land and then the government compulsary purchase it back for less and leave the folk stranded..and these where Bulgarian Nationals!! If you are going to buy property abroad anywhere - keep your eyes well open!!  Good conservatory in Sofia though.

[ahinton]

Be carefull Bulgarian authorities can be VERY funny about land laws and Ive heard of people have purchased land and then the government compulsary purchase it back for less and leave the folk stranded..and these where Bulgarian Nationals!! If you are going to buy property abroad anywhere - keep your eyes well open!!  Good conservatory in Sofia though.

Good point - but never mind Bulgaria, this kind of thing - colloquially known as "land grab" - has already happened to land in the countryside in certain parts of Spain (especially around Valencia), to such deleterious effect that a few unfortunate people have even ended up not only losing their land and any property on it but with invoices for the costs of reposession; applications have been made to the EC to outlaw this kind of sharp practice and it is now gradually on the way out. Compulsory purchase orders are not unknown in UK, of course, although both the legal framework that purports to support them and the extent to which property owners who become subject to them actually suffer loss are usually far less drastic than in the Spanish cases I have mentioned; indeed, someone I know received a compulsory purchase order on his property near Bath, UK, from his local authority a while ago and actually made a thumping £35,000 profit on it because the said local authority didn't do its proper legal searches on it; had it done so, it would have discovered that the property was subject to a protected tenancy which substantially reduced its actual market value, but the owner wisely kept his mouth shut about that - after all, he was hiding nothing and he pays tax to that local authority just like everyone else around here, so why add to the agony of that by making a point of telling the truth the the taxpayer-funded local authority seemed unable or unwilling to check out for itself?

Best,

Alistair

[zheer]

you see!  i knew zheer was rich.  he is now buying a house, albeit in bulgaria.  bulgarian women are very very beautiful.  they are supposed to have the best skin in the world.

   LOL ,rich no far from it, but i have land back in my country that is as large as Heathrow airport, seriously ,the only thing is it's not worth much and since it has been passed from one generation to another generation it's currently going through some legal stuff.

  anyway whats this about Bulgarian women.

[pianistimo]

zheer, i hope you get what's yours (landwise - or a good compensation if that's what you want).

seems that all the spa's etc pride themselves on these bulgarian mud baths and skin treatments.  if skin stuff says bulgarian - it's probably good.  that's my impression anyways.  what do i know.  i think part of it is the allure of the foreign language, too.  if they speak bulgarian - then they must be a skin professional.

i'm trying to think of the name of a top model who is bulgarian. 

[pianolearner]

  Many thanks pianolearner, so you own a property by the beach ,great stuff. You know thats a very good investment. Just looking through the websight makes me think thats its very traditional type of place.

Zheer,

It's about 400 Metres from the beach. There aren't many properties on the beach as such, which is nice. Some people have mentioned "land grab", something I've heard happens in Spain and it is in the back of my mind. (Like getting cancer, being killed in a plane crash or being hit by an asteroid). I asked my Bulgarian Attorney about the likelihood of it happening in Bulgaria and he said the chances are very, very slim. He said it's even less likely to happen in an area that has town status and is part of a Municipality. Sunny Beach comes under the Municipality of Historic Nessebar. Not only that, Sunny Beach is an extremely popular tourist area. The government (IMO) would be committing economic suicide if it were to do something that scares foreign investment away.

https://www.beachbulgaria.com/nessebar/index.shtml

Like people have said, the infrastructure is way behind the standards that we have come accustomed to in Britain. However, that is one of the reasons why property prices are low. Bulgaria is what you would expect from an emerging post communist nation. There are many abandoned factories and warehouses that litter the countryside and many roads need surfacing or re-surfacing. I was however informed (albeit from my estate agent) that there will be a moratorium on new developments in Sunny Beach to allow the infrastructure to catch up.

I agree with Alistair in that you should not first and foremost consider the purchase abroad as an investment. I bought the property because I like it and the location, plus I could afford to buy it without a mortgage. I used savings and proceeds from the sale of investments in the stock market. I am not bothered about making money on the property and although I don’t want to lose it, it wouldn’t bankrupt me if I did. Its total value is only about 20% of the total equity on my flat in England, which I also own outright, no mortgage.

I am not a shrewd investor, by some peoples standards I would be considered conservative and risk averse. If I were a real risk taker I would re-mortgage my property in England and buy 5 properties abroad.

Like you, I thought about doing something, procrastinated, thoroughly researched then did it. If you are serious about buying abroad, my advice, as I said before, is to do your OWN research. Book at ticket and visit! I am visiting Lithuania next weekend 

P.S: visit the forums on this site

https://www.channel4.com/4homes/

[thalbergmad]

i'm trying to think of the name of a top model who is bulgarian. 

There ain't any.

Most Bulgarian women are shot putters and have hairy armpits.

Thal

[zheer]

There ain't any.

Most Bulgarian women are shot putters and have hairy armpits.

Thal

  Are you looking at men again Thalb.

[ahinton]

Some people have mentioned "land grab", something I've heard happens in Spain and it is in the back of my mind. (Like getting cancer, being killed in a plane crash or being hit by an asteroid). I asked my Bulgarian Attorney about the likelihood of it happening in Bulgaria and he said the chances are very, very slim. He said it's even less likely to happen in an area that has town status and is part of a Municipality. Sunny Beach comes under the Municipality of Historic Nessebar. Not only that, Sunny Beach is an extremely popular tourist area. The government (IMO) would be committing economic suicide if it were to do something that scares foreign investment away.

It was I who mentioned "land grab" in Spain and I do know that, in certain areas, it has happened (although, as I also mentioned, moves are now afoot to outlaw it). For the sake of better understanding, I should perhaps have added that this has never, to my knowledge, occurred on land already officially classifed as "urban" - it has only happened on "campagna" - so, if the Bulgarian system works similarly to the Spanish, your Bulgarian attorney would almost certainly be correct in what he/she tells you here, given that your property is on land already classified as urban.

Like people have said, the infrastructure is way behind the standards that we have come accustomed to in Britain. However, that is one of the reasons why property prices are low. Bulgaria is what you would expect from an emerging post communist nation. There are many abandoned factories and warehouses that litter the countryside and many roads need surfacing or re-surfacing. I was however informed (albeit from my estate agent) that there will be a moratorium on new developments in Sunny Beach to allow the infrastructure to catch up.

Again, it was I who mentioned this. The backwardness of the infrastructure is indeed one reason for the low property prices; another is that those prices are unlikely to increase significantly unless and until speculators move in (although there is at least some evidence that this has already happened in certain areas of Bulgaria).


It is also worth mentioning that property prices in some of the more popular parts of southern Spain have increased considerably, but none, I think, as much as in parts of eastern Catalunya. Someone I know has an option on a 1,350sq.m. plot of building land on a small development near Rosas (which is close to both the Mediterranean and the French border), but he has now abandoned the project to build on it because of the sharply rising costs; the land itself has already risen above 200 Euros per sq.m. and its cost, when added to that of the house he plannned to build on it (admittedly a largeish one of some 450 sq. m. floor space) would amount to at least 1.25m Euros - that's as expensive as it is around here and would wholly defeat the object of his exercise. He's now thinking of buying land in the Charente region of France instead and is considering a 1ha (i.e. 10,000 sq.m.) plot with building permission which has a price tag of a mere 6.61 Euros per sq.m. Not as cheap as Bulgaria, admittedly, but way less expensive than UK or Catalunya. If this proves anything at all, it is that one does not necessarily have to look at Bulgaria, Romania or other as yet under-developed European countries for really cheap housing in Europe and then have to put up with those areas' infrastructural shortcomings (having said which, there may well turn out to be a rather better investment return per se to be had from going to those ex-communist countries and buying).

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

  Are you looking at men again Thalb.

possibly, but it is difficult to tell the difference in Bulgaria.

Both sexes grow beards.

Best find a wife before you go.

Thal

[pianolearner]

possibly, but it is difficult to tell the difference in Bulgaria.

Both sexes grow beards.

Best find a wife before you go.

Thal

Thal, you really need to visit Bulgaria.....

[thalbergmad]

Thal, you really need to visit Bulgaria.....

I have, and i took a photo at the womens institute.

[pianolearner]

Thal, you obviously went out of your way to take that photo. Here are some I took:

The taxi driver who took me to my hotel:



The hotel chambermaid:



A construction worker:

[thalbergmad]

They are foreign workers.

[pianolearner]

They are foreign workers.

Does it matter?