RENTALS

Updated 7/12/07

Please be aware that this section contains an important warning for would-be letters.

Obtaining rentals is without a doubt the hardest and most uncertain part of the process.

Some agents will quote a guaranteed rental figure for a set time period. This gives an element of comfort, but we have heard it said more than once that this is sometimes done by over-inflating the initial purchase price. So do your homework and find out what the going rate is in your area per square metre and if yours has a guaranteed rental deal but is significantly higher than the average price per square metre, then this may be the reason.

Rental is probably not the first thing you consider when purchasing, but it will become a lot more important further down the line, if you are buying with a view to investment. Most apartment complexes have a rental company appointed who will attempt to attract clients. It is not obligatory to use them of course and they are not necessarily the best option. It is also possible to do your own advertising via local press or internet.

Here is our own experience so far after owning our Sofia apartments at The Monastery for almost 2 years and Cedar Heights in Pamporovo for 18 months.

The Monastery

As these are city apartments, we bought them with the intention of letting to corporate clients, and indeed they were marketed to us as such.

However, they stood empty for the first nine months.

The Bulgarian rental agency tasked with finding tenants did nothing as they were more used to holiday rentals, and did not appear to have much understanding of the corporate market.

Eventually, an British owned and Sofia registered letting agency, Englaria Property Solutions Ltd., volunteered to step in, and within a month or two (October '06), succeeded in obtaining one year rental agreements on our apartments. They charged 13% + VAT per annum of the rental income.

The client was a corporate sporting client requiring 14 one and two bedroom apartments.

Although slow to begin, we started to receive rental payments in arrears for the first 5 months of the tenancy.

Then, in April 2007, alarm bells began to ring when the letting agent started to make excuses for non-payment of the rent.

We were given various reasons, all to do with failings on the client's part, but finally towards the end of May, we were given the bad news that the client had decided that they did not wish to honour their 12 month contract.

Instead, they wished to vacate all apartments at the Monastery by the end of June due to the end of their sporting season.

It was obvious to us that they must have known that their season would come to an end at this time and therefore they would not require the apartments beyond this date. According to the Bulgarian lawyer of Englaria, it would be possible to sue them for breach of contract through the Bulgarian courts. However this process would be likely to take up to 2 years to go through the Bulgarian judicial system.

In view of this and as they were refusing to pay the 4 months backlog of rent unless they were allowed to breach their contract, we really had no option but to let them go.

Tragically, the very weekend they left, the directors of the company were killed in a car crash in Bulgaria, leaving numerous debts unpaid and no money in their bank accounts. At least that is what we were told by Englaria.

A very unfortunate episode all round, but we felt things had to get better. How wrong we were !!!

In early September we received a phone call from Englaria stating that they had found another tenant for one of the apartments. We agreed to accept this tenant who moved in mid September.

Towards the end of October we tried to contact Englaria in the UK by phone to ask when we might actually receive the first month's rent for the new tenancy. However to our dismay, they had changed their contact phone number such that it was not receiving calls. We have tried to contact them repeatedly by email, phone and letter but without obtaining any reply. We contacted their Bulgarian office at the Monastery and we were told to contact the UK office, however their phones were not operating and they would not answer emails.

Since then we have been made aware that there are many other owners who are letting their apartments through this company who, like us, have not received any rent for many months. We recently received a general email sent out by Englaria stating that the owner has been ill and that we would be paid within a week or two. To date this has not happened and we have very little faith that it ever will.

Over the 12 months that we were with Englaria we have had nothing but excuses for late or no payment such as problems with their UK bank account not being set up, telephone lines not working, mobile phones not working, clients being killed in car cashes, illness etc. etc, At this moment in time we have lost 4 months rent on one apartment and 6 months on another and probably also the tenants deposit.

Note, Englaria Property Solutions UK Ltd is a Cornish-based letting agency. We would recommend anyone considering letting out their property to exercise due diligence before committing, whether here or abroad with any letting agency. The above details are our personal experiences only.

We are no longer using Englaria having switched this tenancy back over to a Bulgarian letting agent.

Cedar Heights

Our second apartments are ski apartments in Pamporovo which completed in June 2006.

The first ski season which commenced in December 2006 produced only one weeks's rental on one of the apartments. We had decided to give the resident rental management company a chance, as they told us they had been in negotiation with Balkan holidays and various other tour operators throughout 2006.

We were bitterly disappointed with their non-performance, especially as part of the marketing ploy when we bought was that there would be a longer rental season in a skiing resort as opposed to the coast due to the likelihood of both summer and winter rentals, and also they were claiming at that time to be in negotiations with tour companies.

We therefore decided to set up our own website www.BulgariaSkier.com to advertise our apartments for this coming season, and have already had several bookings and are expecting more in the new year.

Garden of Eden (Black Sea Coast)

Our apartments at the Garden of Eden, St Vlas are now complete but as yet we are unable to give details of our experiences with this complex.

Page last updated: 7th December 2007