• A power of attorney declaration (signed by you) if the solicitor will be completing on your behalf (in both Bulgarian and English text)
• A document to affirm where the funds had come from (i.e. anti money laundering) (in both Bulgarian and English text)
• A declaration for citizenship and civil status (in both Bulgarian and English text)

Please see our general comments with regard to translation of documents on our Title Deeds page.

We have now completed on two properties, and have used both methods.
Our personal experience is detailed below and should explain the main factors involved, although you will see that there were some striking differences in the handling of the two completions. At this point, we ourselves cannot explain this, except that we were dealing with different agents, developers and municipalities, and we were largely following the guidance of the agents concerned.

Our first completion

This took place in the notary office in Sofia, and we decided to represent ourselves.
The notary meeting was organised by the selling agent through whom we bought the apartments. We were taken to the Notary meeting by the estate agent's representative who was based in Sofia.
In addition to ourselves, the agent's representative and the Notary, the developer's solicitor and a translator were also present.

We were there for several hours, and we found the whole procedure slow and boring. The Notary first checked our passports, then ensured that the forms mentioned above had been completed and signed by us , and last but by no means least read out every word appertaining to the title deeds in Bulgarian.
This was followed by the translator's interpretation in English during which time we could if we wished ask questions or ask for clarification of anything we were not sure of.

Once all parties were happy with the deed, six copies of the title deed were signed by us, the Notary Public, the developer's solicitor and the translator. We did not receive a copy at this stage.
Our registration for a Bulstat Number and for Bulgarian Council Tax were handled by the developer's solicitor.

Due to problems involving a Power of Attorney document for an absent joint owner for one of the apartments, the meeting took approximately four hours. We suspect that without this it would have been more like two hours.

If buying a Bulgarian property which was not part of a large complex, we feel it would be essential to have an English-speaking Bulgarian solicitor representing you at this meeting, whether or not you are in attendance yourself.

Our second completion

As previously mentioned, we used an English-speaking Bulgarian solicitor, recommended by the selling agent, to assist us in our completion of the purchasing process for our apartments in Pamporovo, although we also intended to be present ourselves.

His tasks were to draft the final notary act, make the necessary checks on the property and to register our ownership with local government and apply for a Bulstat Number if we did not already have one. In addition, he either had to be in attendance at the Notary meeting if we were going over to sign ourselves, or we needed to give him Power of Attorney to represent us in our absence. His fee for this was 650 euros. We found him to be helpful and responsive. Most of our communication with him was via email.

He sent the additional documents listed above to us via email in advance of the proposed Notary meeting. These had to be notarised by a British Notary and Apostilled (arranged for us by the selling agent and for which we paid a £95 fee), and then returned to the Bulgarian solicitor.

Unfortunately two days before leaving for Bulgaria, we were informed that the developer was not in a position to formally complete as he had not been successful in obtaining the final completion paperwork from the local council (Act 16). This was very frustrating as it was the main purpose for the trip along with our first viewing of the completed apartments.

The end result was that the Bulgarian solicitor acted on our behalf at the Notary meeting several weeks later, and we received the title deeds approximately a month later.

Our third completion

Although our third apartments are not yet complete, we have already encountered yet another method of completion.
This was called an advanced notary completion, where we conducted all the legal business ahead of Acts 15 and 16 being obtained and making the final payment. In this case we were emailed the additional forms mentioned above, plus a second Power of Attorney form for construction purposes.
We had to make an appointment with a British Notary to have our signatures witnessed on these documents and to have them signed and sealed by the Notary. The charge for this was £80 and it took approximately 30 minutes. These were then returned by post to the selling agent, who had them apostillised for us.

Update 12th April 2007

We have now completed on our third apartments at the Garden of Eden complex in St.Vlas. This was achieved using the advanced notary completion described above. This allowed us to have 85% of the actual purchase price stated on the deeds, this was not ideal, but the best we could hope to achieve. Hopefully this dubious practice of declaring a lower value on the notary deed will be stamped out with the recent EU accession. With recent changes in the law (see details on taxes) this will not have much of an impact on any future sales depending on our timing of sale.

Although we have now completed on our apartments, we cannot by any means call them complete. They are effectively just shells, having no kitchens installed (these are classed as furnishings) and the complex itself is far from ready. Despite being told that the complex will be open for tour operator rentals from June, having seen recent photographs of the site we feel that from past experience this will not be the case. We have therefore decided not to participate in rentals this year at the complex as the only tour operators on board are from the eastern block and we doubt that many rentals will be achieved This will mean that the completed complex will not be entirely complete until a year after the orginally specified completion date. This appears to be the norm in Bulgaria. We are now planning to travel to St Vlas in June in order to snag the apartments and plan furnishings.

Definitions:

A Power of Attorney is a document that authorizes an individual to act on behalf of someone else.