º£½ÇÂÒÂ×

I suspect the issue with many online property sites is that the sellers never really had the property for sale in the first place! I experienced this, too. Sold properties can be left up on the websites, often years after the property sold, and also many online sites scrape other sellers's listings, either to get hits on their site to run ads, or because they'll get a finder's fee if they refer you to the actual seller.

We bought our place on ebay from a very established pay-monthly seller, and their properties do genuinely sell extremely fast, usually within days of listing. But if you follow their listings, those properties also often reappear for sale when buyers change their mind or the spouse finds out or they realise they can't afford the payments, after all. If that's who you're trying to buy from, ask what they have available that they haven't listed yet.

Word of mouth is a viable way to purchase, and if you know the area you want to buy in, the mayor's office may be able to advise of available properties. Or sitting in the local cafe or bar and letting it be known you're looking. Facebook groups can be useful, too, there are some regional groups including active sellers.

You want to read up and be sure you understand the legal process and are absolutely sure of what you're buying. The UK government advice on that is here:

Unless you have an EU passport, you can't buy a property that includes land - to do that requires that you get Bulgarian company set up, which can own property as a company asset. This isn't needed to buy an apartment provide it doesn't include any share of the land it's on.  Also be aware that though some sellers and Brits already in Bulgaria may make it sound as if moving to Bulgaria is easy, post-Brexit it can be a challenge for British citizens to get long-stay visas and non-EU passport holders can only stay 90 days per 180 without a long-stay visa. There are quite strict requirement to obtain this.

@mjbelldawson

As Jane said, often the brokers don't actually have the authority of the vendors to sell the properties they advertise - and they also tend to have others displayed long after they've been sold, because they want to attract punters and then try to sell something else to them or because they simply don't know a property's been sold until they call the real broker to negotiate a split fee.  Sometimes the real brokers won't play ball, so the interested party is fobbed off with a lie along the lines of "Just sold yesterday, Guv!".

It's always worth using Google's image search on some of the photos of properties you're interested in: you may well find that some actually are still for sale with another broker, or even by the owners themselves.....

I had to contact a estate agent five years after we bought our home because it was still being advertised for sale online. It was eventually removed from their site.

@mjbelldawson

Haskovo is pretty specific, I don't think you'll find a huge selection of properties available there! I think you'd have more success with a broader geographic search.

It's not impossible to find something by word of mouth, but it's unlikely. Most sales have an agent involved somewhere along the line.

A couple of big agents that have lots of properties all over Bulgaria are BulgarianProperties (dot com) and Property (dot bg)... but they have only 1 each in Haskovo region. RightMove seems to have more potential as they have 10 houses currently listed.

Properstar (an aggregator, showing listings by agents) has quite a few properties in the area.

I don't know what your budget is, but this search turned up a VERY nice house in downtown Haskovo... for a mere million euros. :-) And the agent seems to be local, and has many Haskovo properties (most MUCH cheaper).

Try this (1,800 properties showing up, but some might be rentals):

tinyurl(dot)com/ms4jvah5

@JimJ

Good link. Alo (dot bg) or Realestates (dot bg) is a big one too with lots of listings (another aggregator/portal for lots of agents).

Depends what you are looking for  Ive got two standing empty one 3 bed near the Turkish Border and one, one bed about 30 minutes South of Lovech  Both need a lot or work on them though. Investment plans for another year as currently doing my main house up