is there a house for sale in your village ?

People have illusions

It must be very difficult , often disappointing and probably nerve  wrecking trying to replicate your  British homes.

I don't like rats , cockroaches and mites but I do Like old wooden floors , Porcelain tiles are slippery and dangerous @gwynj  .

Maybe they have dreams , are fed up with western European society and just want to change the environment completely .

It doesn't have to be porcelain. Granitogres can be textured and not slippery at all. And it's much more practical on the lower floor. For the upper floor I already have well dried pine planks, ready to be layed over the new subfloor.

pine planks - yes I want
tiles only kitchen

HELLO
I have been to Turkey. I  will defo come back
I loved it here

I have created this posted hope that some of you might know someone in your village that have a house for sale .  If there was one, I could send my husband  to check it out. Maybe a huge favour to ask but please bear us in mind If the house would be in your village ,then perhaps you could advise me on the area

There are some great advantages here over the British Isles. There is summer. There is a sea you can actually swim in (I go to Burgas sometimes, and use their city public beach, it's a lot less crowded that those at the resorts). We love swimming outdoors in mineral water in the middle of the winter (in Velingrad). Abundance of tasty seasonal fruit and veg (eating our own grapes every day for over 2.5 months now, and loved eating our own walnuts).

And, of course, the prices and the taxes.

And the freedom. Alcohol is sold whenever the shop is open (unlike in Bonnie Scotland). And many other "progressive" things are not pushed down your throat, as they are now in the more advanced countries.

But there are, of course, many downsides. The first hurdle will be learning the alphabet, this should be done before coming here

@KingaCo. Clare There is one (posted the link here), but I would not recommend this particular one.

Since you are already decided to be near VT, I fear it'll be a waste of time to explain why we are where we are (and it's far from VT). If, however, your husband is going to travel a bit around Bulgaria, to choose the area (as w have, back in 2017), he's welcome to visit, stay with us a bit, see what the area and the available houses are, and talk to to friend and builder, who is an expert in reforming these old Thracian village houses.

I have started to learn already .
I have an advantage as Polish and Bulgarian are both in Slavic  languages. 
I remember once in BG I was trying to have a small conversation with some who only had few words in English. I could not understand him well so I said , U know what, speak in your language , he did
and I actually understood him better

It doesn't have to be VT

You are so kind , you really are Talking to someone like you would be indeed a treasure . May I pm you?

Sure!

What is a price for a reasonable place with a garden of sorts? I don't like new complexes and happy with a bit of renovation but not too intense.

Yes, It would be nice idea to see them , My hubby is staying in Veliko tonight .

The "ugly truth" is that when you buy shit you get shit!!  Anyone surprised ?

so trying to find a house for no money, people coming to live here get exactly what they pay for.

Otherwise, a decent house in a good location stars from 60 000 BGN onward. a new prefabricated house starts approximately from 50 000 BGN onwards ( good quality and at least 100 sq. meters), a good solid construction, done from scratch will cost you at least 150 000 BGN, without the price of the land.

Prefab houses:


53 500 BGN /107 sq. meters/



73 000 BGN  /142 sq. meters/



99 100 BGN - /127 sq. meters/



126 900 BGN / 141 sq. meters/


And these are still the cheaper options .... So if a person decides to buy a 100 yrs old house for just 3000 EUR, it is hard to believe s.o. would expect a palace, and very funny when that person stars complaining!

@kristiann, you make some great points, as always.

I would just say that, in the UK, it's very common to buy and renovate 100 years old houses, and British construction of that era is very solid. Indeed, planning and building protection is quite restrictive there, so we are required to renovate, rather than pull down and build from new. So I suppose we don't realize that a Bulgarian 100 year old house is not so easy to renovate (or is not cost effective to do so). Or even that Bulgarian building authorities probably don't care if we knock it down and replace it with a brand new one. :-)

The other issue is that we buy a cheaper house, and we don't realize how much it will really cost to renovate. And you start down the path thinking that if it's a cheap house, it must be cheap to renovate too. And we don't know the price of a brand new house to compare. Once you've bought, and spent a year of work and a chunk of money... it is kinda hard to give up, and say you made a mistake. Well, it is for me. :-)

You are absolutely right gwynj!

Just that a 100 years old house, solid construction  and a good quality just doesn't cost 5 000 bgn. Neither in the UK nor here in BG.

Renovation expenses are another topic.

OTOH, for some of us, buying a 100 year old mudbrick house for a few thousand EUR and doing as much of the work ourselves as possible is exactly why we chose Bulgaria!

A traditional earth-built house in the UK will cost at least £250,000, and will probably need as much again spent on it in renovation.

So it depends what someone is looking for, and what a buyer's expectations are. If someone buys a wreck expecting it's a wreck and aware how much work is needed and the likely costs, it's not an unreasonable choice. Personally, I know my house is likely to be campable at best, rather than liveable. The walls are all intact. The roof needs replacing but isn't currently leaky. There's a room with a sink that could be a kitchen, and an outside toilet. The electrical wiring almost certainly won't run a modern washing machine or a big fridge and definitely wouldn't run air-con.

And I'm okay with that. I'm not expecting or wanting a UK style bathroom and kitchen, or air-con. Once the roof repairs are done, everything else can be done slowly, by me. Some of us have skills to work on our own houses. Some of us actually WANT to try living the way our grandparents or great-grandparents did!

My blessing is that I can do that while having enough income to live on as well. I won't starve if the garden gets eaten up by grasshoppers or the tomatoes get blighted or the hens stop laying.

Of course, there will be idiot wannabee expats expecting to buy a house already at Western European standards for 3,000 EUR, or get a total wreck completely renovated and pay peanuts. But I'm pretty sure KInga and her hubby are not those people.

And neither am I, despite buying a wreck for 3000 EUR!

Vielko tarnavo region is a great idea. I live in a small village 45 mins from there. No issues with schooling I have 4 kids under 6 two in kindergarten 9-5 Monday to Friday . People like to make it sound harder than it actually is, yes it’s hard to relocating and finding a property etc but nothing is impossible. When I started this process of relocating I was told it wasn’t possible and it’s complete rubbish. If you need any help I’m only a message away. Good luck with everything. I also lived in my house before the transferring of funds, the people who I brought my house from were lovely and we are still friends who talk often.

So many questions - where in Bulgaria, why, budget - al the usual questions when thinking about moving - get savvy!!

I certainly did not expect a palace or even a habitable house for the tiny amount I paid.  I am also aware, having already been through a renovation project in England that everything takes twice as long and costs twice as much as expected and budgeted.
However eventually I hope to have a nice, comfortable house with land and stables with a total build/renovation cost of around 100k.
Where I live in the Southeast, a comparable house would not be far short of a million, no exaggeration. The land is the premium price here.
Yes, it may all go pear-shaped.
But what I really did not want was to be sitting in England aged about 80 saying
"Remember all those houses in Bulgaria? Why did we not try? "

You have gottabejoking wrote:

So many questions - where in Bulgaria, why, budget - al the usual questions when thinking about moving - get savvy!!

Are you referring to me ?

Personally, I think there are many nice cities/large towns in Bulgaria. If you have a village house within say 15 to 30 km of one of them, you are still pretty close to hospitals, schools and supermarkets (and DIY stores, you'll need these!).

So you could be near Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas, Stara Zagora, Veliko Tarnovo, Yambol. Elhovo, Ruse, Montana, Pleven, Troyan, Shumen... it's quite a long list. :-)

Plovdiv district is doing rather well these days, prices are going up significantly. It has 3 good cities, Plovdiv itself, and Karlovo (in the Balkan range) and Asenovgrad. It's also got a bunch of nice villages to the south of Plovdiv in the foothills of the Rhodopes.

by the way ,have anyone bee to village Karaisen?

Hello everyone,

Please note that some posts have been removed from the forum.

Thanks,

Diksha
Expat.com team