Are you always this pathetic Auto? All I said was that the website is about Shadow's personal experience and that he does not get paid for links as you were making a big deal of this. You seem to have a really big chip on your shoulder. Any post people make you have to blast, particularly with regard to Bulgaria and property. Tell me do you actually know anything about the country or the property market here?
I am just pointing out a simple fact that is obvious to everybody; you are involved in selling Bulgarian property, therefore your contribution non this topic cannot be seen as objective. Simple as that.
I know an awful lot about Bulgaria, and the property market there. I made it my business to examine the prospects in all the post-communist countries after 1990, and that included an analysis of Bulgaria's propects. I was there in 1999 when the huge pyramid scheme robbed most of the country of their savings and caused the collapse of the central bank and the Lev. The crisis was so severe that it cause a famine in parts of the country; farmers used their seed money to get into the pyramid scheme and lost the lot. Strangely, much of the money made in this scheme by the few gangsters who controlled it made its way into property development, where it joined up with drug profits and similar funds from elsewhere in Europe.
When the new wave of scamming emerged, i.e. the sale of grossly overpriced property to gullible foreign investors, I looked at the market again to see if there was any element of sense in it; I found none. Initially the developers simply sold at a markup of 50 to 60 percent on the local price. When they realised that they could get even more from foreigners with no idea of the real value, they kept pushing prices up. In order to tempt the gullible further, they created the "guaranteed rental" scam, adding a couple of years rent to the already over-inflated prices, and drip-feeding this money back (if they are lucky) to the people who actually own the money, minus handling charges, and of course liable for tax.
You also need to remember the kind of people who are involved in the development business along the ocast in particular. High-pressure sales companies like McAnthonys, often slated on these pages because of their approach, are the best of these, not the worst. Remember the number of local developers shot dead as they battled for control of this foreigner-fleecing business? Is this a sane market, or one for a beginner from Ireland or the UK to invest their savings or mortgage top-up?
The bubble has yet to burst, but it is certain as the sun rising tomorrow. Over-supply, thousands of properties bought on borrowed money in the expectation of rent returns that are not going to materialise, and a huge supply/demand imbalance that is unique in Europe. All this makes for a crash of epic proportions; nothing like this has been seen in any European market. There is no underlying saving grace that can take the sting out of this situation; there is no market for retirees as happened around Alicante in Spain when properties were over-hyped there. There is no year-round tourism, just short seasonal business aimed at the bottom of the market. There is no large resident population with the ability to buy or rent these properties. Even if there were, the prices being achieved for sale to foreigners are so far above the local market values that ther is no possibility of getting money back. There is simply no merit in the majority of the property being mass marketed to overseas buyers in Bulgaria.
These are the facts. There are areas of opportunity in Bulgaria certainly, but the risk is too high for most savvy investors. The top-heaviness of the scam properties in the resorts is a factor likely to pull down the entire market, the good with the bad, so anyone with any sense will stay away.
Am I pathetic because I don't walk of the cliff with the rest of the lemmings? Probably, but only in the eyes of other lemmings.
