www.mybulgaria.info

My Bulgaria located at www.mybulgaria.info has been designed to give you all the information you would ever need to know about Bulgaria as a country, a travel destination or about buying property or living there...and anything else for that matter! It is quite simply a one-stop location on the Internet for information and information sources on Bulgaria.

Extensive listings of Bulgarian property for sale, a FREE legal advice centre, an on-line discussion Forum and much more factual information besides.

My Bulgaria has been launched by Balkan Holdings plc in the UK who, via its executive officers has extensive experience and knowledge of the Bulgarian real estate market.

There is an increase in purchases of real estate in Bulgaria by foreigners from Western countries, the United Kingdom in particular.

According to statistics, the real estate market in Bulgaria has improved consistently in the past 13 years, but still could be defined as developing.

"The reasons for people from the UK to come and buy land in Bulgaria is 90 per cent as an investment. Very few people plan to come and live in the country yet," said Chris Northam, chief executive of Balkan Holdings plc, which works with foreign property investors from the UK and further afield.

"There is a considerable interest from foreign and local buyers in developments located in the outskirts of the capital and on the Black Sea coast," he said. Northam thinks that most traditional international buyers are from the UK, Germany, Italy, Israel, and Russia, among others.

Northam said that the real estate property markets in Britain and Ireland and in many other countries had been getting more expensive over the past 10 years. At the same time, many people who had bought land in Spain were now selling it off and buying apartments in Bulgaria.

"This trend, of people replacing their interest in buying property in Spain with buying property in Bulgaria, is increasing," he said. Eighty per cent of investors wanted to buy new developments and apartments, not cottages in the mountains.

The increased foreign direct and indirect investment in Bulgarian real estate is linked to Bulgaria's expected EU membership and expanding tourist industry, according to Northam. There is an attractive return on investment rates in the real estate sector, on average 15 to 18 percent, not referring to the whole real estate sector in Bulgaria. "Sofia and the area of the Black Sea coast are tourist destinations, which have attracted foreign opportunity investors in recent years," Northam said

"Demands for residential real estate, especially apartments in all Sofia regions, has significantly risen due to improved and competitive mortgage lending by the banking sector - 80 per cent annual increase as compared to 2002,".

The same trend was felt in the real estate market on the Black Sea coast, from the beginning of 2003. Sales prices of brand new residential properties increased almost twice in some areas compared to the previous year.

There is a difference in the buy and sell property market between Bulgaria and the US and the UK. "The basic difference between the way real estate is handled in the US or UK and Bulgaria is that that there is no Multiple Listing System in Bulgaria yet. In addition, in the US the seller covers the agent's compensation while in Bulgaria, the fee is covered half by the seller and the buyer respectively," says Northam.

It is partly for this reason that My Bulgaria has been established and also, for the first time, to collate the vast amount of disparate information available about Bulgaria and her property market on the Internet into one coherent and easy to use site.

Northam said that “we have obviously hit the nail on the head judging by the initial visitor numbers we are experiencing to the My Bulgaria site after just 3 weeks in operation”!