The Property Purchase Process.

The Bulgarian property purchase process is based around the concept of owning the “registered title” to a property. The question of disputed title has been raised in relation to ownership of Bulgarian property, since the land registration process has only been in place since 1990. There was a 4 year resolution period where all disputed land titles were argued out. The situation has now been settled for 10 years and provided that you make any purchase via a legalised notary you shouldn’t have any problems with respect to this issue.

Foreign individuals can own buildings in Bulgaria, in a similar way to the leasehold system in the UK. The main difference is that there is no time period on the lease.

** Land however can only be owned by foreign nationals by way of owning a local Bulgarian company. The Bulgarian company can be owned by an individual/individuals or a foreign company. This is a process we can set up for you.

For new build, off-plan property, the normal steps to owning a property in Bulgaria are as follows:

1. Find a property
2. Decide whether you wish to buy with or without land
3. Make a verbal agreement to buy a property, at which point it will be removed from the market
4. Carry out full checks on the property (on ownership documents, land sketch, securing proper title deeds etc)
5. Sign a preliminary contract and pay the reservation fee
6. Check the terms of the contract (you normally have 30 days for this)
7. Sign the contract for construction of the new property at the notaries office and pay the deposit (normally anything up to 30% at the contract stage. Notary procedures regarding real estate matters cannot be carried out outside Bulgaria by law – the Notary Deed has to be signed before a local Notary in which area the property is situated.
8. Declaration of the purchased property in the Tax office.
9. Continue with the stage payments according to the terms of the contract. This is likely to be something on the lines of 30% deposit, 20% on completion of the foundations, 20% on completion of the roof and a final payment of 30% to transfer the rights.

This process is likely to take place over 12-18 months, depending on the size of the development. Larger developments tend to have a longer development period.

For this and other info on buying existing traditional property in Bulgaria see our mortgage page