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I would love to hear back on what property searchers found when they looked at houses!

I thought I was prepared, and yet I cried the first night in my house, it was in need of so much more work than I expected. Agents' photos may be out of date, and some descriptions may be overly optimistic. I didn't realise when I specifically asked about the condition of the roof that being told "It will need attention at some time, but no immediate repairs are required" meant "provided it's not raining"!

Prices of not only properties have risen, but renovations and building materials, as well. When I first visited Bulgaria back in 2013, it was still possible to spend 5k GBP on a solid house in a nice village and renovate it to a good standard for another 5k. I paid 10k GBP for our fixer-upper (not quite a knocker-downer) house in a rather remote village in a less popular region in 2022, and have spent at least 12k GBP on renovations so far. It's nowhere near finished yet! OTOH, I see there are a couple of absolutely derelict properties in the village on the market for 15k EUR on the Bg language sites, and one or two Brit-owned places on the market in the 30-40k GBP range on the Fb property groups that have been renovated but still need work. So maybe our House Beautiful, as hubby somewhat ironically calles it, wasn't such a bad buy. We like the very rural in Dobrich province area. We're blessed with wonderful neighbours, the house is in the village centre so all we need is easy to access.

One wonderful surprise -- the village, not the best at first glance (lots of run-down closed businesses, a couple of older daytime drinkers nursing their cans of beer outside the village shop), has turned out to be delightful, friendly and welcoming, cared for, and with just enough facilities to get by. It's essential to be aware that online descriptions of villages and places marked on Google Maps may be well out of date. Many villages have shrunk significantly, so are full of abandoned houses and closed businesses. Online descriptions and a Google Map marker showed a bakery and a petrol station as still being open in our village when they closed many years ago!

But we're still feeling very blessed to have bought where we did. Finding a good village is far more important than finding a good house. Bad houses in a good village can be fixed. A good house in a bad village is never going to make for a happy life.

I don't know about anything fit for "the most outlandish of soap operas or 'reality' programmes", as there aren't any full-time Brits in the village to cause drama! And I don't understand enough Bulgarian yet to know what local dramas are going on, though at village events and coffee mornings, there's always plenty of noisy discussion which may well turn out far more interesting when I do learn more of the language!

Their likely talking about the English people in the village lol.

My village has couple English people, apart from my wife, I'm Irish but they still call me English.

The house we brought was previously owned by English couple, was unoccupied when we viewed then had fire in barn (bulkhead light was left on and overheated) prior to us putting offer in.

Negotiated price to cover cost to repair barn, new roof needed.

That was 6 years ago and prices for materials have gone up a lot since then.

Their likely talking about the English people in the village lol.
My village has couple English people, apart from my wife, I'm Irish but they still call me English. - @mickg

LOL, as I believe we're the only Brits currently actively visiting the village (there are three formerly Brit owned houses that are unoccupied, never visited, and on the market) they'd be talking about us in that case. I wonder what we could get up to to give them something really worth talking about?

I wonder what we could get up to to give them something really worth talking about?
- @janemulberry

Well, we bought our village house from some Brits who our Bulgarian neighbours informed us lived in the UK but were running it as a guest house, only coming to the village when they actually had paying guests to cater for.  They were a bit bemused about how it was possible to balance those two seemingly-opposed aspects of a business but apparently it did work.  I did some ferreting on the internet about the exact nature of the operation - and then had the pleasure of introducing some older rural Bulgarians to the concept of "Swingers' Weekends"....some of them have never recovered from the shock! 🤣 

Lol

@JimJ

Not quite our style! But that would certainly feed the village gossip machine!

Okay, let me get the ball rolling with a bit of information about "our" village, which - for the moment at least - I'm not going to name.

There are c1,800 people living in the village, including c50 Roma folk who live in their own "mahala" - I am the only foreigner there.  The village has traces of habitation dating back to Thracian and Roman times. There are various hot mineral springs in the near vicinity and a couple of spa centres, together with a number of significant historical sites, some prehistoric. Sofia is c1 hour drive away, as is the Rila Monastery; there are  various other monasteries closer by.

The closest town in c10km away (with Lidl/Kaufland/DIY sheds etc etc)  - there's a regular bus service to/from our village. There are a few shops/bars/cafes/hardware shops in the village, but the nearby town is too close for them to really make a decent living.

There's an airfield close by (a Luftwaffe base in WW2) used by small aircraft/microlights/ultralight helicopters etc.  There's also a parachute club and the c3km runway is used for drag-racing meets at the weekends.

There's no crime to speak of (last one was when we were burgled by some druggies about 10 years ago 😡).  We have mains sewerage, and there's plenty of groundwater close to the surface, so many people have wells for watering their gardens. Internet, as in most places in BG, is very fast. Power-cuts are very rare.

Property WAS dirt-cheap: our fully-renovated/fully-equipped 3-storey house cost £18,000 about 15 years ago (the neighbours thought we were ripped-off 😀 ); similar houses in the village, in considerably-poorer condition, are well over €130k nowadays!

And our village is very different to @JimJ's!

It's set in a river valley in the Danubian plains in Dobrich province, so there are no views apart from at the top of the hill, though along the small river is quite pretty. The population is now less than 250, though it once housed over 2000 people and there are a lot of derelict and abandoned homes. Driving into the village, it does not look good, so many wrecks and ruins! The village centre has several long-closed businesses that are slowly decomposing, as well as the couple of businesses that are still open and the well-kept official buildings.

The area is very rural and quite remote, though easy to access with a weekday bus service to the nearest town. It has a primary school, an active cultural centre, and a small museum. There are some Thracian ruins, basically holes in the ground. No one has decided what they were, whether a hill fort or a mine, but it's a nice quiet place to sit, with a view across the valley. A small village shop occupies a tiny fraction of the floor space of the original shop in a crumbling building, but stocks most everyday needs. A busy cafe/bar is open 6 days a week. There's a post office, and a mayor's office who do a good job maintaining the public areas of the village.

I'm not aware of any crime issues, I think if there were, they'd be taken care of quite quickly. There are a few daytime drinkers who sit in the town square nursing their cans of beer all day, but they're friendly and harmless. There are some permanent expats in the village, a couple of Ukrainians, a German couple, an Israeli family, a Palestinian family. There are other expat owned properties, but some are never visited. Three Brit owned places in various stages of renovation are on the market with prices from 20k to 40k GBP depending how much work is still needed, but there are no permanent Brit residents and I'm not aware of any other frequent British visitors. Not complaining about that, we'd rather practice our Bulgarian with the locals than huddle speaking English in a expat enclave. It's nice to meet other English speakers occasionally, but I think too much time with other expats would make it so much harder to integrate.

The village is about a 15 minute drive to General Toshevo, a small town that we both like a lot. It has a T-Market, a few smaller supermarkets, a good hardware/homewares store, Ekont and Speedy offices, doctor's offices, helpful pharmacies, and a lot of other useful small shops and services. A significant percentage of the population are ethnically Turkish Bulgarians.

From Toshevo, it's a 40 minute bus ride to Dobrich, the regional city. This looks like a post-industrial wasteland at first glance, but is actually a decent small city with great shops and parks and a vibrant town centre. And from Dobrich, on to Varna, the major city and the international airport with a limited but reasonable range of flights to Britain, Europe, Israel, and Turkey.

I am really curious how the current price rises will impact those buying, who is buying, where they are buying etc.

I presume back in the day there were quite a few buyers that really didn't do any research at all, because the prices were so affordable and it was worth the "punt" (and in some ways it probably added to the whole adventure...).

As prices rise maybe so will the research (closer to towns/cities, schools, buses/trains..future infrastructure projects etc...understanding the different regions etc).

Just to add to the prices debate...we bought a wreck (rebuild job) with about 400 square meters of garden in the "ideal" centre of a smaller city....just under 5 years ago for €30k.

We've done absolutely nothing with it since.

Looking at current prices, 2/3 bed houses in an ok condition in the same location in the center (although not many being sold - mostly apartments) are asking around €200-250k.

Sounds like a good buy, just on the land value!

I doubt our village house is worth all that much more than I've spent on it. But we want it to live in, not to sell on, and in the meantime, the UK house we'll sell when we move is increasing in value. So it's a win.

@janemulberry

Totally!. For us Bulgaria has never been for an investment.

Just to add to the prices debate...we bought a wreck (rebuild job) with about 400 square meters of garden in the "ideal" centre of a smaller city....just under 5 years ago for €30k.
We've done absolutely nothing with it since.

Looking at current prices, 2/3 bed houses in an ok condition in the same location in the center (although not many being sold - mostly apartments) are asking around €200-250k. - @VillageLife

There have been a couple of boom-and-bust property cycles in my time here.  If you can afford to just sit on a property (and it doesn't fall down/get squatted in the meantime) then its value will indeed rise.  The problem is that the cost of property renovation has also skyrocketed: I can remember the days when you could get a labourer in rural areas to put in a decent day's work for 5 leva - or 10 if you were feeling generous 😎.

Nowadays, renovation is anything but the cheaper option if you factor in that many fixer-uppers were either built pretty shoddily in the first place or have been left to their own devices for so long that they are likely to fall down anyway..

@JimJ

Yes, prices have risen for building by the looks of it. We have been quoted between 500 to 1k euro per square meter (higher price including full finish and also kitchen/bathrooms installed etc).

Obviously varies depending on quality and what you are building etc.

I think the rise in costs are obviously linked to rising cost of building materials etc but I also think other factors have led to the current boom (in some hot spots at least).

That sounds more like an estimate than a quote - an important difference. My advice would be that you need to be on-site every day of the project, as it's easy for everyone to think that they're on the same page but actually to be talking about apples and oranges.

You also have to be prepared to be 100% firm (or ruthless, if you prefer that description): any shoddy work or p*ss-taking is remedied immediately and at no cost to you, if not you shouldn't hesitate to kick the "builders" off the job. If you're weak, or seem to be, they'll just take advantage and you'll be left kicking yourself.

Most "masters" here are only enthusiastic amateurs at best and total bodgers at best: during our renovations of various properties, my wife has several times had to calculate load-bearing figures and maximum unsupported beam spans for "experts" who figured that "all beams are the same", and I've had to tear out plenty of electricity cabling installations and explain how to do the job properly.  It's absolutely the case that all the skilled Bulgarian workers are abroad these days and the even half-competent ones are busy until Christmas, regardless of what month we happen to be in today....