The first house hunting trip

Thanks for continuing to read my blog.

Gorgeous blue sky with E's tree

I am trying to go back over the last 18 months and distill out the steps (both clever and stupid) which have led me to the place I find myself in now; proud owner of a property in Southern Bulgaria and on the countdown to the day I pack my life up here and become another of the thousands of people who are leaving these shores.

I left you at the end of the last post as I got back from the first visit to Bulgaria and what a success it had been. We had felt welcome everywhere we went, even being stopped as we walked through the town by someone who recognised us from the cafe the night before and wanted to greet us again.

Now, for the long hard part of the process; finding somewhere to buy.

There are many websites online which sell houses in Bulgaria; all you need to do is go onto any search engine and type the words in. In addition to this you can go via eBay where there are continually excellent opportunities. What I found was, however, that on eBay the houses for sale are (understandably) normally clumped together in "ex pat" communities which I did not want to live near, and were also mainly towards the north of the country.

Following some activity on search engines I identified a couple of websites which had several houses in the rough region that attracted me and I contacted these to arrange for a viewing. These were Bulgarian Properties and Bulgarian House and both were attentive and agreed to arrange viewings of a list of houses which I identified from their websites.

The trip was booked in August and it allowed for me to experience the heat which is common in the Bulgarian summers.

For this trip I stayed at my friend's house which ended up being an excellent choice as the first full day, which I had put aside to spend time with the representative from Bulgarian House, ended up being free as I could not contact her at all and she did not show up at the arranged meeting point. Another lesson learned; nothing in Bulgaria ever really happens perfectly to plan, no matter how well you plan things.

Not to be discouraged, myself and E headed off in my hire car and explored the region without another guide; we decided to use the location of a group of houses for sale (which Bulgarian Properties were maybe going to show me the day after) as our target and when we got up there found what appeared to be the perfect property; it was set in the middle a large amount of land, it needed knocking down but the floor plan was big enough that a new Skitza would not have been necessary as I could have built on the footings, and the location was perfect; the only sound when you stood in the back yard was that of the wind in the deciduous woodland surrounding it.

The Rhodopean ideal (or at least mine)

Unfortunately it was not marked for sale; just another of the plenteous empty properties which are scattered all over the Rhodope.

The next day had always been planned as a rest day and I enjoyed every second of it, especially as the thermometer reached 45 degrees while I sat in the sun with my Kindle, a hat on and a large bottle of the local beer to keep me hydrated.

Slightly warm.....

Lovely cooling beer (plus a fly hoping to get lucky)

There was more luck the next day with George, the excellent local representative of Bulgarian Properties, actually ringing me as I was about 10 minutes late to our meet up point and this good impression continued through the day; George had a clear idea of where he wanted to take me and had taken account of the sheets which I had printed out with houses on them. We visited an old primary school up above the lake (too exposed, house pointing the wrong way, needed completely knocking down and the price did not take this into account), an empty house on top of a mountain (very difficult road to get up, one neighbour but they were very close, beautiful views, very cheap indeed) and then a village in which every house was for sale (no road at all to the village - had to walk for ten mins to get to it, houses all needed a lot of work, would have had to buy the whole village) and finally to a house which we had some background information on as it had been offered to another friend previously and the paperwork was not in order.

The primary school

The house on the mountain (plus George)

A couple of the village houses, and George on the "road"

The house with no paperwork

From the whole day there was not a single house which came close to the perfect one we had discovered on our own the day before and, when we asked George about it, he said he would do his best to find the owners. I also went home determined to track them down and give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money.

An important point to note, and one which cannot bear being repeated too many times to ANYONE who is looking at purchasing a property abroad in any country is: make sure the paperwork is in order before giving any money to anyone. In  Bulgaria there are two items of paperwork which are vital and without which you should not even start buying a house; the Skitza and the Noterelien. The Skitza is a plan of the property defining where the land you own ends and also the footprint of the building. The Notorelien (my spelling is almost certainly wrong here) is a description of the contract for ownership of the house, like the deeds in the UK.

I asked George about these for all the house which he showed me and he was not able to produce them on request; this is a big red flag and my advice would be; if someone cannot show you those documents, walk away.

Summer sunset over the Greek Mountains