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Hotels are cheaper than apartment buildings

It is much cheaper to buy yourself a hotel than a residential building in a city like Sofia or Varna. It turns out that a square metre of hotel property is far less expensive than a square metre of housing property. At least this is what real estate websites show. The Bulgarian seaside hotel properties' average value per square metre is 750-800 Euros according to imot.bg and imoti.net. On the other hand, a two-bedroom apartment in a brick building, in the district of Dianabad in Sofia costs 1075 Euros per s.m. averagely.
There are 400 hotels for sale at the moment. Half of them are at the Black Sea coast. Many are in mountain villages or near Sofia. Most of them are small and family-run. Due to the overconstruction and the low-prices of the tourist packages they have become not cost-effective for owners who rush to get rid of them at the end of the season. Despite the avalanche of offers, the low prices and the unsàlable hotels, the construction boom at the seaside seems getting out of hand. October 15 was the day when the summer ban on construction works implementation was lifted. "Investors have already put too much money into grand projects and cannot afford giving up when things have been half-completed," said vice-president of the National Real Property Association Lachezar Iskrov.
He also pointed that entrepreneurs are now more careful as to where they put their money, because it is already quite obvious that the returns in the tourism sector begin to decrease. "So far it was the British  that constituted the major investment share. They would care much more about the payback rate than about the property as such. They would make a lot of greenfield investments and the majority of them would not even come and have a look at their property.
However, things are different now. The market is trying to attract as many clients from Russia, Romania and the Baltic countries as possible," commented GreenLife Property Development Executive Director Nikolay Pehlivanov. "They  demand, spacious, green and comfortable housing. The Russians buy property to spend their vacations in Bulgaria. Therefore they want spas, swimming pools, sports facilities, restaurants and flower gardens.
This summer too, many lucrative deals were made, and on fair prices. This means that the Bulgarian real property market is still quite capable of convincing foreigners to buy seaside estates.