If you think about buying property abroad, the first thing you should do is to make clear what kind of property you are looking for - holiday homes or pure investment. The consultancies with professionals are highly recommended before taking practical decisions.

Usually, if you decided to buy a property in Bulgaria, you will go through following steps:

Foreigners can purchase property with land in Bulgaria only after registering their own Trade Company formed in Bulgaria. The company will buy the land, and on the other side the same company will be 100% owned by the respective foreign person. Bulgarian participation in the company is not necessary at all. The owner of the company can be its manager as well.

If you are buying only an apartment, you may have it as a physical person and the steps you have to make when buying this type of property, are as follows:

• You have to pay a reservation fee of 1000 - 2000 EUR. After paying it, the property you have chosen is being removed from the market and is reserved by you for agreed time, settled with the company, until the moment you begin to pay according to the payment plan, specified in the Preliminary Contract of Sale-Trade.
• Signing Contract of apartment Sale-Trade – You sign it, when you are ready to pay the first installment according to the installment plan, which is approved by the building investor and this contract is made between the buyer and the developer, and the Agent is not included in the Contract. The contract points when the following payments have to be made and on what stage of the construction the investor will require these payments.
• During the payment of the last installment, the buyer and the developer transfer the ownership of the apartment to the new owner with the help of a notary, and here comes the payment of the 3% transfer fee, which is obligatory for all kinds of deals.

The buyer becomes full owner of the property in the moment, when the final purchase contract in special notary’s form becomes concluded. The contract /title deeds/ is prepared from solicitor and certified via notary. After the signing of the contract in front of the notary it has to be filled in the special property register in the local Regional court / the register is analogue of the cadastre register in some west European countries/. There the contract obtains special number, which can be opposed to every one contract filled latter in the register.