A second home in Bulgaria?
Around 23 000 new-built apartments South of Sunny beach are looking for buyers. This showed data of the ...
Posted by Yanko on 2008-04-01
Misconception:
It’s all legal. Your property agent’s lawyers will exercise all due diligence to see to that.
Reality:
The possibility of legal violations looms large at each stage of the construction process, both for individual developments, such as hotels or apartment complexes, and for whole resorts. Data gathered by Bulgarian institutions shows that about 25% of all property in Bulgaria is built without permit. A notoriously illegal complex is the Golden Pearl development near the village of Varvara on the southern Black Sea coast which is in breach of several laws, more specifically the Spatial Planning Law (it is being built on a plot of land which is not designated for construction by the municipality’s general spatial plan), the Environmental Protection Law (no environmental impact assessment has been issued), the Law on Waters (no permit for water usage had been obtained before issuing the building permit, as the law prescribes), the Protected Areas Law (it is inside the Strandzha Nature Park and has not been brought into line with its protection regimes). Currently, a halt of all construction activities in the complex, enacted by the state authorities, is in force. This however does not prevent property agencies from selling the not-yet-built apartments off-plan. A large number of the apartments have actually already been sold which in this case unfortunately doesn’t appear to be the “right move abroad”.
Sometimes the source of the money that financed the construction of a resort is unclear or dubious. The investor in the future “Super Panichishte” winter resort, Realstone Trade Business Corporation, is an offshore company registered on the Virgin Islands, UK, which refuses to disclose publicly the source of its funds. It is likely that it is drugs, weapons, anything. It is certain that they are building the resort undercover, in a hurry, without explanations and in gross violation of a large number of environmental and spatial laws. As a result, high quality cannot be expected. Similarly, the extension of the existing Borovets resort into “Super Borovets” is co-financed by an offshore company.
Due to widespread corruption in Bulgaria and the silent approval of institutions (up to ministerial level), the realization of such projects has a high degree of likelihood. Bansko ski resort encroached upon Pirin National Park even though according to Bulgarian law, the construction of ski tracks in national parks is prohibited, as the parks have been created to protect unique natural phenomena and plant and animal habitats. The scheme is now replicated in Panichishte where an asphalt road and a chairlift encroach upon Rila National Park. Ski pistes within the boundaries of the national park are also planned, together with hotels with 10,000 accommodation places in Panichishte and another 10,000 in Sapareva Banya which will spell out an environmental and infrastructural disaster for the whole area likely to eclipse the mess in Bansko.
These violations have not provoked an action by the Bulgarian institutions until now, but European institutions most certainly will not sit by idly for long. Now that Bulgaria is an EU member, it is subject to EU legislation in its full scope. Infringement procedures may be triggered that will force Bulgaria to halt the construction of projects that do not fully comply with normative criteria. In the event, many investors might end up deceived, as property agencies already sell vacation apartments in resorts whose entire existence is as of today not yet entirely certain – such is the case with Mirela Real Estate which sells off-plan apartments in a new development in Panichishte resort, apparently relying on the resort’s planned (but not yet realized) extension. See for yourself here