Buying in Bulgaria - a Guest Post

Today is a guest post from BobS who bought a place from eBay and went over last year to go through the legal processes for buying it. He also drove roughly the same route I am planning. Enjoy :)

On the 24/06/2012 I went to my usual kettlebell class but had set an auto bid on a property in Bulgaria. The place looked very nice indeed and seemed quite a bargain. I left the kettlebell class and came home and saw an email telling me I had won the property. What follows is my tale along with some pictures and some information regarding buying from eBay.

First off I’d like to say I bought my property on eBay from a user there called PaulHawtin and that’s his name too!! Paul got in touch and I paid him via bank transfer to a UK account and arranged to travel over at some point in the next few months to sort paperwork etc.

My house

The basement of my house

What I didn’t know was how things work in Bulgaria and I’ll tell you here and now they work SLOWLY, more slowly than you can imagine. In fact think about driving along the motorway at 70mph and suddenly coming across three tractors all travelling at 5mph which you are unable to pass  Initially you may feel a little frustrated but this is soon washed away when you realise you now have time to relax a little and enjoy the scenery which you’d never seen before (we’ll talk about Bulgarian roads a little later).

The Prius in Bulgaria

So this was my plan, to drive across Europe in my prius and arrive on a weekend and sign for the house on Monday, have builders in on Tuesday, get water and mains electric in on Wednesday and have it habitable by the second weekend complete with indoor bathroom!

On the ferry to Dunkirk

I left Cardiff and drove to Dover to catch the ferry to Dunkirk as though it takes longer to get across you save petrol from the reduced mileage :) From there I drove into Germany and spent the night at a small hotel just off the motorway, very nice it as too :)

Tesco in Hungary

Next day I drove to Hungary and spend the night in Budapest in a Holiday Inn. Please note you have to drive with lights on all the time in Hungary!! At this point it should be noted I saw that Hungary is actually a nation doomed, how did I reach this conclusion? By the presence of Tesco stores of course :\ Stands to reason really.

From there I headed for the Romanian border and my plan was to drive Across Romania and cross the bridge over the river and enter Bulgaria via Ruse!

Driving in Romania

Romania sucks to drive across if you are in a rush or have no idea what to expect. It is a perpetual trail of village after village all with 30mph speed limits.

The buying process.

So I arrived in Ruse and met with Pav on Monday, we drove to the property in his car and had a look around, he checked I still wanted to buy it and explained the process.

The hotel in Ruse

Tuesday I signed a notary deed giving him power of attorney which at the time seemed very scary indeed and was not something I was used to being from the UK, it is however seemingly the norm in Bulgaria.

Pav had quite some issues with the Notary in Pavlikeni and eventually we had to settle on hiring an interpreter and this is what we did.

The hotel in Pavlikeni

The notary was a lovely lady and the signover took around 90 minutes. We had 2 copies of the deeds with skitza etc .

So what I thought would take 2-3 days actually took over 3 weeks so don’t expect things to move fast, also I’d advise ensuring you have an interpreter so you understand what is going on as it can be quite frustrating and stressful watching a conversation go on without understanding a word of it.

So that’s my story!

Abandoned puppies in Bulgaria