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Based on my experience, I agree with all of this, unfortunately! We've found it's not always easy getting decent reasonably priced tradespeople to work on our UK house, but multiply that by a factor of ten for a very different country and not speaking the local language to any meaningful degree. 

Especially consider the advice to double or triple your expected budget. Even with the help from my neighbours, almost everything has cost more than the initial estimate, or the quoted price didn't cover everything I thought it did.

Deliveries can be veeeeery slow and unpredictable, and will usually dump everything at the front gate. Far higher quotes for non-Bulgarians are normal. Standards of work may not be what's expected. Workers will turn up when they feel like turning up, not when scheduled to turn up.

Without the help my fabulous neighbours have given, taking in deliveries, dealing with workers, making sure I get fairer prices, I don't think I could have managed to get anywhere with renovating my house. Or I might have, but I would have had to pay a far higher price to get it done. I'm very aware how blessed I am!

@janemulberry

Thanks Jane. I think your feedback will help a lot of people to remove the rose tinted spectacles. Hopefully people can use the info to make better informed choices 💞

I want to add -- I am 100% happy with my decision to buy a cheapie fixer-upper in Bulgaria, and we fully intend to move there as soon as we can get the D visa! Our experience overall is very positive.

But it's important people know what to expect, especially those hoping to buy a lower-cost older house and renovate it on a small budget. It can be done, but there will be plenty of challenges. The house will almost certainly need more work than anticipated and end up costing more than planned.

For those with either plenty of money to spend and/or a good range of building trade skills, the problems are less, of course, but it still won't be easy.

I suppose it depends on what you buy. We found something that we could do majority ourselves. Our triple glazed windows we had from order to delivery in three weeks. Our local general supplier delivers to our door in a day or two depending on product. We were told not to rely on local people in the village as they were unreliable.

Perhaps our previous experience of renovating a house in France taught us as my husband worked as an electrician and he often had to sort out other tradesmen’s mess ups who weren’t just expats but also French.  We admitted that we made an error by buying a house that needed too much renovation when you are working 7 days a week to earn your living.

Good luck with whatever decision you make.

@S25 - Sean

This is not my experience of Bulgaria. Moreover, I think your reaction/experience is much more likely based on the particular circumstances of your move here, and not necessarily through fault of Bulgaria or Bulgarians.

Specifically, you purchased a ruin/derelict property for (presumably) a small (relatively) amount of money. Such properties need a LOT of work to renovate them (or even make them basically livable), which, by definition, takes a lot of time and money. It's also a stressful and difficult environment as you have nowhere to live, and making it livable is a fairly urgent priority.

And, of course, most folks who buy ruins do so because they have very limited funds... which means, inevitably, needing much more than you paid for the house to pay for the subsequent renovations is challenging and incredibly stressful (as every bit of haggling over the next work stage can seem like a matter of life and death).

Large scale renovation projects are easier for expats who are proper DIYers, ready and able to do almost every aspect of the work. And have figured out a comfortable, quick-to-achieve baseline (e.g. decent caravan + one good room + plausible kitchen/toilet/shower facilities). And, most importantly, have a pretty good grasp of the likely costs of renovation (not just of the initial purchase) and already have that money (or most of it) to hand.

I've done a huge amount of work on our village house, and I've finished off multiple flats in Plovdiv from a Bulgarian Standard concrete box to a fully-finished, furnished, desres. It's cheaper than the UK, but it still costs a lot of money. (The flats worked out at around 400 euros/m2, which is a major chunk of money. And this is without any kind of big structural work, such as roof, double-glazed windows, insulation and render, rewiring and re-plumbing.)

I definitely needed to have an attitude readjustment. We're living in the poorest country in the EU, and most of the building work is simply not "first world" quality, and the timing (start/duration) can be very unpredictable. Moreover, Bulgaria real estate has been booming over the last few years, so all these guys have a ton of potential projects (and/or projects on the go simultaneously), so they've got no patience with anyone who wants to nickel-and-dime them or endlessly complain that their work isn't up to standard (or needs to be redone) or that they're taking too long.

The real estate boom here means prices have risen enormously, so there are very few bargain fixer-uppers left. But still so many stories of all the cheap Bulgarian village houses and YouTubers documenting their awesome new life in their 2k Ebay diamond in the rough. In our village (or the two neighbouring ones), you'll be lucky if you find a village house for under 100k, even when it needs work. This means anything (or almost anything) that you pick up for under 10k (maybe even 20k/25k) is likely to be a complete money pit (and more suitable to be knocked down than renovated) rather than a future gem.

@gwynj

The interesting thing is that there are quite a few renovated (to varying degrees of completion and/or standard) properties for sale which still represent good value. Buying a dirt-cheap renovation project is superficially attractive, and may be all that an incomer can afford, but it'll take a long time, and ever-increasing sums of money, to complete those renovations; it's much better to take a partly- or fully-renovated property off someone's hands because they've run out of money/health or suddenly remembered that they have kids "back home" or need the NHS.

It really is surprising how cheap some foreign-owned renovated properties are, even nowadays. I imagine that I'll sell my village place when my FiL pops his clogs, but luckily it's a very in-demand village and there's a constant stream of Bulgarians looking for property there.....😉

I think for those who come to Bulgaria with either more to spend upfront or very well established building skills, it's definitely easier.

After Sean mentioned in a different thread that he's looking to spend a bit more to get a house needing less major rebuilding work, I checked the RightMove listings for the seller we both bought from. They had some nice looking renovated places listed at not a lot more than the total cost of buying a wreck and fixing it up, but without all the aggravation. And those were on pay monthly, so would be discounted for anyone able to pay in full. That's the lower hassle way to go for anyone who can do it.

Those of us with less ready cash to spend hoping to buy a lower cost property and do it up over time need to expect a wreck in need of a lot to work, and come equipped with excellent DIY skills, lots of determination, willingness to deal with frustrations along the way, and a box of tissues for the inevitable tears.

But I'm confident for us it will turn out to be worth the frustration and tears!

Some brilliant points.

When I first bought the house, I did so mainly for the land with a view that if it costs more to renovate than the value, I'd rent a digger and knock it down. Keep the land tidy and save for a prefab. Completely unaware easy skip hire is not a thing in Bulgaria lol.

5k per year budget. Can do most works myself, at least with a labourer to assist.

My income stopped for 3 months, burned through my renovation pot to survive, tried getting back on track but my father's health or at least his ability to care for himself after a stoke kinda changed my home life rapidly. 6 week trips I'd planned were forced to become no more than a couple weeks away.

As a non driver 30km from a town, with a house that has no door number for deliveries, just getting materials to make the main structure water tight is not going to plan.

I don't blame Bulgaria or the people, it's just a different way of approaching things there. I can botch my roof for the winter, if I get windows installed. Get past winter and can then replace the timbers with a bit of help... from that point, so long as materials arrive on site will be fully capable of doing short bursts of everything alone.

A 20k budget first would definitely be the better option, but ya can't leave a house for 4 years while you save 500 a month.

If I was approaching this in UK, I'd have timbers and windows on site within 48 hours of ordering and be water tight in just 3-6 weeks. 🤣

Life gives lemons, I'm trying to make lemonade right now. Hopefully will have windows in the coming weeks and will figure it out, albeit slowly.

Appreciate everyone who shared their knowledge and experiences. You folks are awesome

Sean

It's tricky balancing everything when the budget is on the lower side and we can't just up and move there full time to sort things out! We have to trickle in the visits and the spend on the house.

I hope you can get things delivered as you need. Street names and numbers being meaningless in many villages can make this way more challenging. Is getting the delivery driver to meet you at a known location in the village and you guiding him from there an option? That's what my neighbours did with my big building material deliveries. There's a landmark shown on Google Maps down the street, they gave that address then met the delivery truck there to tell them where to make the actual delivery. It worked fine.

Also I hope your dad has made a good recovery!

@janemulberry

Absolutely you can arrange to meet delivery drivers in the village square, or somewhere else equally as recognisable. Satnavs are notoriously unreliable/clueless when it comes to street names in villages here - and giving exact co-ordinates doesn't help if the streets don't even appear on the maps.  However, you will almost certainly hit the "no BG phone number" problem again: companies won't send out their drivers against a promise that you will actually be waiting where and when you're supposed to be if they can't call you to confirm that you really are there...😎

It does need a Bg phone number they can call or Viber, yes.

I think my Bulgarian is almost good enough now to say "I'll meet you at the snack bar." (On the main road, on Google Maps in the correct place, and not much over 100 metres from our front gate!)

I finally managed to get a Bulgarian SIM after two failed attempts. The trick that worked for me was to not try to register it in the phone company's app or to top up online, which requires a residency card. The phone shop did the legal stuff of linking the SIM number to my passport, and I can top up by voucher at the village Post Office or the phone shop in town where I bought the SIM.

Now to improve my language skills so I don't need to keep relying on my kind neighbours!

I have a ViVa sim card, will need topping up at the paypoint in kaufland or online (if it lets me) to solve the phone thing.

Definitely have to meet the drivers, probably 2 streets away at the village shop. It's a mooch away on foot but probably no other option. I'm also trying to get a sign to put up in the garden and provide my own temporary address in Google maps. That will come on the next trip in winter I think.

Did wonder if to go through the process having the property put in cadastral map, but since none of my neighbors for at least 2 streets are in there, would be a complete waste of money until it's livable with utility services connected 😜

@S25 - Sean

I don't think it (mapping) will help, sorry.

All the deliveries (that I've dealt with anyway), work the same way. The driver (or HQ) wants to message (occasionally call) you to expect a delivery (e.g. today/tomorrow/specific date)... and it's polite if you let them know that you won't be there / need another day. And then the driver (usually not HQ) wants to call you (not message) when they are either already in/near your village, or soon (5-20 minutes) will be. The driver expects to meet you at the standard meeting point/landmark. None of them want to hunt around on Google Maps, or schlep around the village looking for me.

The only exception is occasionally there's a regular driver for your village/area with a particular supplier, and he remembers where your house is and comes direct. But that's rarely happened for me.

I agree, it is kinda annoying, but it actually works very well, and, in my case, walking up to the village fountain (our standard landmark,.. and easy to say in Bulgarian) is a 4 minute walk. The upside of the Bulgarian method (which I like) is that if they can't contact you (and then meet you), they don't deliver. Nobody leaves it outside on the ground, or in the bin, like the UK couriers are tempted to do. If Praktiker plonking down your 2,000 euros of building materials outside your gate because you weren't home, you'd soon be begging them to revert to the current system. :-)

@S25 - Sean

I'm a little confused here:  if your property is one of the increasingly fewer which don't appear in the National Cadastre then it should be in one of the older local municipal plans. You should at least have a copy of the skitsa from the municipality with your notary act.  Either way, you'd be well advised to get it done ASAP - property can easily go walkies here and it could be difficult to prove title if someone else decides to register it.