Apartments on Black Sea Coast

Unfortunatelly lots of the listings are not real. There are a lot of interesting properties by the seaside. My opinion is, if you do not insisit to use real estate agents  , to look at the listings of the sales of the Private enforcement agents. There are quite nice apartments there.

Thank you Vasilev.  Can you please enlighten me as to what you mean by Private enforcement agents?  I have never heard of such people, so I have no idea how one would contact them.

Living in Burgas myself, I do not consider Sunny Beach or its (better) neighbour Sveti Vlas suitable for full year residence. Because out of season, not much more life there as on our graveyard.
Because of special visa requirements, BG is/was a favourite holiday area for Russians. Who also bought a lot of appartments in Sunny Beach, now for sale. Because of the devaluation of the Russian currency. 
You should have a look at Sarafavo instead, part of Burgas. Quite a few British over there already. Good public transport to Burgas City, where in winter time you can visit the opera, or a cinema. And where to find open malls/shops.
To be on the safe side, just see for yourself, but out of summer season. May or October very suitable. Car rental then is very cheap, starting at 10Euros/day.

You need to be aware, that we also have winter climate here at the seaside. Most appartments in Sunny are badly isolated, have to be heated using the air con. Not pleasant, and quite often not very effective.

Hi I'm thing of buying appartment house near burgas. I'm from UK. Which areas do recommend?

Full year residency ?

Thank you for this information Babajaga, it is good to know.  I will certainly look at the area in Burgas you recommend.

Sincerely,

John

Yes

Then I can only recommend Burgas itself, or its surroundig, may be, especially Sarafavo, which is rather populated by expats from Germany, Great Britain, Russia.
Its beach, however, is not as good as in the other locations, I mentione here.
In case, you are not a single like me, and having a car, you might check out Pomorie or Kraymorie, too. Because still within limited distance of Burgas City.

For first impression regarding real estate prices, check out: alo.bg

Yes there are some over-developed areas such as Bansko and Sunny Beach which haven't fully recovered.

Also, as you spotted, these resorts (both winter and summer) tend to have significantly higher maintenance fees.

If you find a place you really like, and you don't care about the maintenance then it's fine. Personally, i think these fees can be substantial for a larger apartment, especially compared with the low propery taxes. (The resorts also have higher tourist prices for taxis, meals, etc. so you lose one of the benefits of moving to a low-cost country!)

Hence you might consider a main home somewhere plus a small holiday apartment (as maintenance is per m2). We looked at doing that at the beach, but we already have a city pad + a Bansko pad, so we figured we wouldn't spend enough time at the beach to justify it. Especially as usually we've had no problems finding decent places to stay at around 20-30 euros/night.

As mentioned, I think you need to consider if you want to live in a resort. Sunny Beach is a zoo in summer with packed beaches and lots of noise (clubs, bars, drunken teenagers, etc.)... and then a bit dead in winter.

For all year round, I would prefer Varna or Burgas... but prices are obviously much higher in these cities.

For a holiday place I much prefer one of the smaller beach towns (there are quite a few to look at) away from Sunny Beach.

For example, we really enjoyed Sozopol, and viewed several properties there.

Hi there,

While not sure how you ended up with selection of Sunny Beach, it would be good to know that this is primarily youth resort, focusing on low priced tourists, alcohol tourism, non-stop parties etc. Beaches are heavily overcrowded in the high season and it is a ghost town in the low season. (funny, it used to be a high class resort once, but everything changes with time).

Considering the information provided in your post, I would not recommend this place.

Much more appropriate in my view would be Pomorie, which is also a famous mineral water resort, and pretty close to Burgas too, certain parts of Burgas, as well as parts of Nessebar, Varna (e.g. St. Constantine and Elena), or even Sozopol. Bur primarily Pomorie and Burgas.

Bulgarian seaside is currently heavily overdeveloped, so selecting wisely is a good approach. I would also advise on visiting the property before buying it, and even living there for a short period of time.

As for the apartments,  prices would vary in a broad range due to location, size of property and quality of workmanship. Some 15 years ago there was a boom in sales of vacation properties to people from Russia, but after the economic decline started there, many people are selling their properties. This is also an important piece of the price puzzle. Of course maintenance costs vary too.

In all cases a short "test-drive" is a good approach.