What kind of properties do Russians buy in Bulgaria?

What kind of properties do Russians buy in Bulgaria?

If you look from afar, the Bulgarian property market is overflown with the most incredible rumors. Russian agents pass around by word of mouth stories about "one lucky realtor who had organized a sale of apartment priced at half a million euro", and earned a good deal of money from that transaction. Among buyers there are rumors, which are going around, about someone who has bought very nice apartment, without any disadvantages, right on the sea coast, for less than €25 thousand.

Both options are not fictional, but there are in reality only as a rare exception. A rule is a steady market with predominant types of resort and urban real estate offerings with the average transaction price of €30-50 thousand. Although the cases, when customers depart from the patterns, tend to happen in recent years with increasing frequency.

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"In most cases two-bedroom apartments are purchased for €30 thousand in Bulgaria"
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"The most selling real estate object in 2013 was a furnished one bedroom apartment located 300-800 m from the sea at a price of up to €30 thousand, says GoryanVarbanov, the managing director of New Estate. – Moreover,in terms of demand, we have noticed one very interesting tendency. Approximately 80% of Russian buyers start searching for real estate in Bulgaria from freestanding house with a plot and a garden, but as a result, they purchase an apartment in the seaside resort.

The reasons are quite commonplace. First of all, such houses located directly on the coast that Russian buyers are looking for, simply do not exist. And secondly, nice houses with a private garden are worth more than €100 thousand (the budget that Russians are not willing to spend for a property in Bulgaria). They are located in the villages, about 3, 5, and 10 km away from the beach and even beyond. Therefore, ultimately, people opt for the apartments in resort towns with the developed infrastructure and apparent proximity to the sea."

Let's look at the most popular destinations among the Russians: the purchase of apartments in the resorts of Bulgaria, the acquisition of real estate in cities, and the search for the cheapest options in the province as well.

Strictly to the resort!

Bulgaria is a place where cheap holiday apartments for the vacations on the sea are purchased more likely. This is the pattern of the last ten years. What is claimed, that is proposed – and now the majority of the 270-kilometer Black Sea coastline is built up withstandard complexes densely enough.

Apartments most commonly resemble the rooms in apartment hotels: small rooms and a small kitchen area, but wide and spacious balconies (terraces), furthermore neighborhood with a pool, a restaurant, a bar, green lawns and playgrounds for children to play. Before and after trips to the beach children of primary school age are able to walk around the house by themselves, because the territory is behind a fence and guarded as well.

The whole life in the summer usually passes outside; you need an apartment only for sleep at night. Even to have a breakfast or a dinner, you go out, in case if want to have a meal at home, then you have it only on the balcony, overlooking the sea, or, at least, the pool,for this reason balcony terraces are commonly so wide, because you need to fit a table, chairs, and often even a sofa there. When determining the price of the apartment in Bulgaria, the quadrature of balconies, of course, is a residential area.

These apartments in Bulgaria are veritably the desired request and the final result of the overwhelming number of sales transactions both before and after the crisis. They are these standardapartments in Kavarna, Balchik, near the Golden Sands, near Varna, Sunny Beach, Obzor, Saint Vlas, Chernomorets in Sarafovo, Sozopol, Tsarevo...

This is the British version of a summer holiday in a private apartment on the sea, which was supported by Russian buyers, according to the statistics of sales transactions, implemented by them. But currently we cannot say that this option is the only one, which is unambiguously demanded. In recent years the Russians apparently lead in the ranks of buyers on the Bulgarian market, where Russian buyers, there is the endless search for unconventional approaches as well. And now the realtor listings are significantly reoriented, moreover the building companies are reconsidering the advertising moves.

For example, a few years ago, in order to meet the demand, the phrase "complex is designed for year-round use" was used in the advertisements very frequently. In fact, there is certain slyness in this statement: in most complexes it is difficult to live in the winter, because life is almost dying around, heating inside the buildings and apartments is absent,moreover penetrating cold wind is blowing from the sea. Not in vain the historically established settlements in the coastal regions of Bulgaria are separated from the coast by 3-5 km and even more.

But Russian buyers are mostly initially focused on standard options are gradually beginning to consider their Bulgarian apartment as a second home, where they may want not only to spend a holiday, but also to live in any season, and by the moment when are retired, they possibly can move to Bulgaria permanently. Many people, after realizing that for a comfortable solution of this problem the apartment in a complex overlooking the sea is not very suitable, began to consider the usual urban housing. In other words, they stepped on a purely domestic market in Bulgaria. Furthermore, unlike the British clients, Russian buyers succeeded.

Closer to the Aboriginal people: Russians go to the domestic market

Therefore, within the last two or three years it is quite apparent how realtors have increasingly started to propose apartments in ordinary urban homes along with resort options, usually in large cities on the coast, in Varna and Bourgas. That is whythe secondary market has become so popular among Russians.

One-bedroom apartments and two-bedroom apartments in prefabricated houses, built according to the "Soviet" construction, as well as apartments in new projects may be close and far from the sea, and the price in this market is formed exactly in the same way, as in any major city – depending on the area, type of house, year of construction, size of an apartment. Average prices are about the same as for the apartments in the ordinary complexes.

For instance, one-bedroom apartment in the area Lazur (city of Bourgas) in high-rise building with "Soviet" construction will cost about €30 thousand, in a new house it will be around €45 thousand.In the historic center of Bourgasthere are options from €50 thousand and even more. On the other hand, one-bedroom apartment in Burgas can be bought for €25 thousand, but it will be Meden Rudnik area, which is the most distant from the sea area of Bourgas. Of course, if you are not confused by the condition of the apartment, which requires serious repairs. As for the purchase of apartments in Varna, everything is almost the same,just the apartments areabout 15-20% more expensive.

"The interest of Russian citizens to the acquisition of real estate on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria in 2013 was not exhausted only by the holiday apartments located in the resorts. In my experience, the predominant part of Russian clients was looking for to purchase the apartments in the price range of €40-50 thousand, and located not in the resorts, but in the cities on the seashore. Perhaps a new tendency in consumer behavior was the registration of a residence permit in Bulgaria when purchasing real estate," said Oksana Chizhdenko-Nikolova, the managing director of Ltd Alfacity.

"Of course, these options are purchased only by those people who want to live permanently in Bulgaria, said Maria Laleva, director of the Academy of Sciences "Yazon". – And the number of those people is becoming more and more. Because at the moment the Bulgarian legislation makes it quite easy to receive residence permits for Russians when purchasing the property in Bulgaria, which allows you to stay in the country for unlimited period of time, enter and leave the country unrestricted number of times.

In most cases it happens in a particular way: the customers initially think about the search of a country that allows obtain a residence permit very easily. And when they select Bulgaria, they already understand that they have to look for an apartment or a house in the area, where the indigenous population has being living, in one word, the place of residence should not bein the resorts. Then they learn Bulgarian language and assimilate amazingly fast. The purchase of an apartment in a Bulgarian house, accommodation in the Bulgarian environment absolutely contributes to the successful assimilation."

Cheap and far away: Curiosity leads away to the province

"The customers are looking for everything, says PolinaStoykova, the executive director of BulgarianProperties, – apartments, rural homes, and business objects as well. Russian clients are becoming more curious with regard to what Bulgaria offers not only on the coast, but also in the hinterland, where there are charming towns with a rich history, preserved traditions and authentic culture."

While some experts talk about the awakened interest of Russian buyers to restaurant and hotel business (such purchases are made today on the Black Sea coast in the range of €150 thousand to €500 thousand), while others do well in extremely low-budget sector of sales. If first customers continue to constitute the fraction of a percent of total transactions, while the secondclients threaten "to crush by virtue of the mass."

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"The cheapest housing in Bulgaria cost from 200 000 roubles"
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Russian buyers became interested in the most low-cost housing in Bulgaria about 4 years ago. Prices in the ultra-low segment of the market start from €5-7 thousand. As a rule, these apartments are in poor condition, but after repair, which cost does not exceed their price, the housing is quite ready to be used. And the fact that they are far away in the province, many customers consider rather as an advantage than a disadvantage.

An example from real proposals: one bedroom apartment in an apartment block house built in the 1970s in MalkoTarnovo, is worth €6 thousand. In the same MalkoTarnovoprices for rural houses start from €9 thousand, but no less expensive, because it is the city, moreover it will takeyou only one hour by car to get to the sea. In villages around Gabrovo (the center of the northern Bulgaria, 250 km from the sea) houses are sold from €4-7 thousand, but such purchases are extremely rare: the maximum cheapness actually means serious remoteness from the sea and from the cities as well, and it turns out that such a test is over most Russian buyers’heads.

Text: Julia Lozovskaya, exclusively for ee24.com