Apartments for sale-off plan  Nesebur, €40,000.00

Off plan-Apartaments  Pamporovo, €900.00 per sqr/m

Restaurant for sale  Burgas, €250,000.00

Apartments for sale  Burgas, €35,000.00

Hotel for sale  Sunny Beach, €2,500,000.00

Off-plan luxurious apartment  Veliko Tarnovo, €480.00 per sqr/m

Apartments for sale  Pamporovo, €48,000.00

10 Houses for sale  Shoumen, €150,000.00

Property prices in Plovdiv have reached those in Bourgas

Published on: 09/10/2006

The attention of the prevailing number of investors in real estates is focused on Sofia. The reasons for this are intensive construction work of residential, office and commercial buildings and the migration towards the capital. A place of interest for investors for the last 2 years has also been the second biggest town in Bulgaria – Plovdiv. It is a center of attraction thanks to its old part and to the fact that it is the second most populated town which presupposes high demand for residential buildings. At the moment price levels in Plovdiv are reaching those in Bourgas. A year ago it was unthinkable to announce a price of 700 EUR per sq. m, but at the moment there is demand to buy at this price level even before the construction of the building has started. Indicative is also the fact that every year the number of building permits is rising with 25 – 30%.

As a whole the real estates market in Plovdiv has gone through several periods for the last 10 – 15 years. Those periods were typical for all bigger towns in the country – from quicken interest in buying properties through drastic fall and bankruptcy of a lot of building companies; another period started two or three years ago with extremely dynamic and chaotic processes. Chaotic because people used to buy with the perspective of our forthcoming membership in the European Union and seldom rationally. After the middle of 2005 when the euphoria started to die away there was some stagnation. Naturally, this was a period of high number of offers and low number of clients.

Now Bulgarian and foreign companies which are now entering the market in the town and the small and middle sized companies are orienting towards more communicational areas. This is the reason why the office market is developing quite dynamically and moving from the center of the town towards the main boulevards and along the main arteries coming in and going out of the town. A good example can be given with the biggest commercial center in Plovdiv “Kapitan Raycho”, which is now finished. The top floor of the building is 5000 sq. m. and there are offices on it. Because of good location, good quality and reasonable prices these offices were sold out for three months. The good development of the office sector inevitably leads to some movement on the market of commercial premises.

This type of properties is on average 30% more expensive than residential estates. Commercial areas in the center of Plovdiv have particularly high prices. Despite going down with 205 EUR/sq. m. after June 2005 they still remain significantly higher than commercial properties in the other areas of the town – 985 EUR/sq. m. Price levels in the greater center are also higher than the average for the town. For one year commercial estates have become more expensive with 50 EUR/sq. m. For the rest of the town typical prices are about 650 EUR/sq. m. For less then two years Plovdiv, a town with apparent lack of commercial properties has become full of commercial complexes and there are a lot more to be built. An interesting prospect and challenge in this direction are the future investment intentions for building some complexes on the terrains of OSO – on “Asenovgradsko shose”, Stochna gara and the square of Bulgartabak and the old tobacco warehouses between “Ivan Vazov” street and boulevard “Hristo Botev”.

The trend in sales of establishments in Plovdiv is of steady price increase. For one year prices in all areas except the quarter of Vustanicheski have risen with about 150 EUR/sq. m. As a huge leap in the number of tourist visiting the town is expected, there is growing interest in investing in public buildings such as restaurants, shops and hotels. This is the reason for the significant increase in establishment prices.

There is small number of offers for industrial premises in Plovdiv, so prices are high. Prices in the Industrial zone – North and Industrial zone – South are now respectively 138 and 151 EUR/sq. m. There are no significant changes compared to last year. Industrial estates neighboring the center are being sold at much higher price levels because of the prestige of the areas. Here, however, there is a fall of 93 EUR/sq. m. Last year price per sq. m. was 530 EUR/sq. m. and at the moment it is 437 EUR. Because of the expected membership in the European Union there are stricter and stricter requirements for all present industrial sites, enterprises and factories, especially those in the food industry and ecology. This is why a lot of manufacturers are forced to look for new sites which meet the new requirements, but not all of them can find the money necessary. Only few of the sites on offer, however, are new construction, so in almost all cases the owners have to renovate them. A terrain of 11 decares with a project for sewing factory with own transformer station and all communications in the quarter of Trakia is now offered at 90 EUR/sq. m.

There is a lot of offers for plots in the North and South industrial zones. At the moment the number of such offers is totaling about 300. Their price, however, is relatively low – 15 and 11 EUR/sq. m. respectively, and for the past year these values have remained unchanged. There is significant price increase of 100 EUR/sq. m. in the greater center of Plovdiv and at the moment plots there are being offered at 368 EUR/sq. m. This is due to the prestige of the area, good communications and infrastructure, as well as the relatively low number of offers. Most expensive, however, stay terrains in the center of the town where land can be bought for 515 EUR/sq. m. There is price fall of 5 EUR/sq. m. compared to last year, which is because of the bigger number of offers. As a whole huge demand for industrial sites caused drastic jump in the prices of this kind of properties. There are a lot of examples for this – in 2002 one could easily buy a plot on “Karlovsko shose” at the price of 4.5$/sq. m. whereas now the same plot is impossible to obtain for less than 75 EUR/sq. m. and even this price is hard to find.

There is a trend of growing demand for terrains around Plovdiv, connected with the intensive construction work and development of both residential and industrial buildings.

In the past year there has been demand for big massifs of agricultural land with good communications, which are hardly offered because of the fragmentation of such massifs in the whole country. In recent months more and more small traders and investors have been looking to buy massifs of 20 to 50 decares because of the expected subsidies by different European Union programs.

Plovdiv will continue to develop together with Rouse and some smaller towns like Stara Zagora and Pleven. The accent will continue to be on residential estates. Big part of investments should be used for the construction of office estates in order the town of “tepetata” to attract more investors.

Source: The Real Estate Magazine, June 2006

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