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Purchase of bulgarian real estate becomes easier for foreigners

The grounds for this vote are that such restrictions do not correspond to the law, whose purpose is to encourage the investments. The law is to be adopted by the parliament on second reading.
In the beginning of March, at the conference of the Bulgarian Industrial Business Association (BIBA), the American Trade Chamber and the Bulgarian-German Chamber was requested these restrictions to be dropped off. At the moment the Real Estate Agencies face difficulties in interpreting the Foreign Investments Law and the regulations for applying the Law of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, since there are many unclear points concerning the property or land acquisition in urbanized territories at the border area, in connection to the national security.

Due to the same reason, the Notary Publics faced difficulties to perform the sale formalities of land along the Black Sea coast, which according to the real estate agents is an obstacle for the realties market. Companies in this trade sphere explain that the foreign investors used to buy properties and land via figureheads, but in the long run this practice is not serious and may lead to exodus from the most perspective construction regions in Bulgaria.
The main problem for them is due to the ambiguity in the interpretation of the term “border area”. The lawyers regard the term as applied only for the land and river borders, since according to the Sea Area Law, the sea coast is not considered a state border.
As by the Foreign Investments Law enacted, a juridical person on the territory of Bulgaria can acquire property and restricted law of estate over realties.

According to the “Alliance & Leicester International” report in 10 years time about 2.3 million British people aged over 50 or 1/8 of the British population will spend their money abroad. Till 2020 every fifth pensioner will live outside of England. Bulgaria is among the countries, where the retired British people would like to have a dwelling. Croatia, Turkey, Spain, France and the English speaking countries are also in the preference list. According to the report, till 2012 the governments will offer different tax concessions and other alleviations in order to attract the pensioners. It is expected till 2020 at about 100 billion British pounds to be “exported” out of the British Economics and spend abroad.