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Hi Julie!

We're the other side of the country and bought on ebay so can't specifically recommend selling agents in the area your looking at. Bulgarian Properties has a good range and it's clear when properties have been sold, RightMove also has a decent selection of Bulgarian properties. YouTube and the regional Facebook groups can also be helpful for finding properties.

Unfortunately a lot of the internet sites that will come up when you do an online search are scraper sites that copy listings from other sites. They'll often have very old listings or listings for properties that are already sold, which can make prices look much lower than they are. There's been a big jump in property prices generally over the past few years.

One thing to be very clear on before you start your property search -- unless you have citizenship from an EU country, as a Brit you'll need to be sure you will qualify for one of the D visa Categories. If you haven't looked into that yet, this site gives some good information:

Good luck with your search! I hope you enjoy your Bulgarian adventure!

Good luck with your property search.

Hi Jane!

Thanks so much, I'm aware of the dodgy sites etc hence why I was hoping for a recommendation. No problem with residency we are eligible, have been doing due diligence! I'm struggling to get a feel for whether the north or south is preferable, property, weather, community wise etc. Despite reading books and articles, guess will just have to travel around. I have an estate agent in the north who I trust and has been very helpful, thanks again Julie

Hello everyone and welcome Julie !

Please note that this new thread has been opened on the Sofia forum for better visibility.

All the best

Bhavna

Great that you can get residency, Julie, and have already investigated that! So many people come on the forum and don't realise it's not always so easy to move now.

Your plans to visit the reas you're interested in before buying are so wise! But when you say the south, so you mean the mountain areas, Plovdiv, or nearer the coast? Hopefully some forum members in the right areas for you can make recommendations.

We were so blessed that our place bought unseen in a region we'd never visited (despite being to Bg looking around four or five times before) ended up being good for us. I bought a cheapie wreck on ebay right before the Brexit cut-off date, hoping to get residency under the old rules. That didn't happen because of Covid and then hubby being seriously ill, but we ended up both loving the place we'd intended to just use to meet the requirements and never live in! Now we can't wait till we can move there once we qualify for a D visa.

Julie, skip big agencies, they push overpriced listings. Check towns like Pernik, Dupnitsa, or Samokov about an hour from Sofia for decent amenities.

Thank you both so much. We're looking for scenery but my mountain climbing days are over as one knee shot. Still walk/trek a lot in our local woods and  Snowdonia every year. Stick to forests, lakes etc now. Don't mind the coast but I have to be careful in the sun due to health condition.

Sound's like you fell on your feet with property and area Jane! I hope you don't have long to wait.

Thanks Luis, good advice, I'll try and find some smaller estate agents - if anyone know any I'd be grateful and will look at recommended towns as we ideally want local bar, shop and preferably restaurant etc

Julie, skip big agencies, they push overpriced listings. Check towns like Pernik, Dupnitsa, or Samokov about an hour from Sofia for decent amenities. - @LuisCavalho

I'm not sure what falls under the heading of "decent amenities" but if you mean anything other than some decent supermarkets then I'd say you're fantasising. 

I don't know exactly what Pernik is like these days, as it's been a while since I was there - but I know Dupnitsa and Samokov well, as we've had a house in a large village between the two of them for many years.  There are no decent medical facilities in either; there ARE indeed "hospitals" in both towns but to say that they're they're equipped to handle any even vaguely serious cases is simply not true, and I'm speaking from both  personal experience and inside information from a doctor friend who works in Samokov*.  If you fall ill in that region you want to get to Sofia as soon as you can - not any easy task because it's all but impossible to arrange an ambulance, even one of the Mickey Mouse "man and a van" variety, to get you to Sofia. 

My mother-in-law was recently hospitalised in Dupnitsa after suffering a stroke; the staff in the main "hospital" in Dupnitsa made her go to the bathroom on her own a few hours after she was admitted (which was a long and bitter struggle in itself); she promptly fell over and broke her hip, whereupon the hospital called us and told us that she was being discharged immediately as they "had no capability to look after someone with a broken hip". It took us all day to find a medical "man with a van" who came on his own and without even a medical trolley to get her to the van - and the hospital didn't have one either....

I suspect that the situation will be much the same in any comparable town, so think carefully when you're deciding where to live if you're likely to need any more serious medical care than a decent GP can provide.

*Our doctor friend's father lives in our village and he's several times said that he'd never consider having his father anywhere but Sofia for even fairly minor treatment.

Jane, just wanted to say hope your hubby is well now x

Probably Plovdiv area tbh

Thanks JimJ, appreciate your advice, I have an autoimmune disease so need private medical but also reliable as can be a littleunpredictable. Also want community, shop, bar, etc. Thanks for all your advice

Jane, just wanted to say hope your hubby is well now xProbably Plovdiv area tbh - @Julieoutram

Thanks, Julie, yes, he's much improved now. He has some chronic health issues so we also have concerns about ensuring he has access to decent ongoing healthcare, but the life-threatening issue is now completed resolved. Big relief as it was worrying for a while and he was misdiagnosed initially. Though when we move we'll be pensioners and so entitled to access the Bulgarian equivalent of the NHS, we'll also make sure we're capable of paying for private care.

@JimJ is the expert on Sofia area, as he lives there, and definitely knows what he's talking about!  @gwyn lives in Plovdiv and knows the region well, so hopefully he can chime in with info about that area. It may be that you could start an additional thread asking about Plovdiv, to make sure he sees it.