As with the Notary completion, we have had very different experiences of snagging in each of our completed apartments.

Sofia apartments

We visited Sofia in January 2006, approximately four weeks after the deadline for completion by the developer, and as Act 16 had been obtained, the deadline had been officially met.

We had booked a hotel for two nights as our apartments had not been furnished at this time. This gave us only one day to attend the Notary meeting and to view and draw up a snagging list for our apartments. After spending so long at the Notary office, it was 4.30pm by the time we reached our apartments , and the daylight was failing us. We therefore took a few hurried photographs of the outside before proceeding indoors. The temperatures were well below zero, with thick snow on the ground and it was as cold indoors as outdoors as there was no heating on at that time. So it was a case of checking each room in turn and hurriedly scribbling down various comments before our fingers froze in the process.

With hindsight, we probably would have waited a little longer before arranging completion to allow time for the furniture to be installed, and we would have given ourselves at least one more day there.

After returning to the UK, we wrote up our snagging lists, sent them off to the selling agent, and almost one year later, there are still outstanding faults which have not been corrected, despite our constant nagging. In fact our apartments are now rented out with snagging still not complete. This appears to be either the fault of the complex manager, who has not been passing on our snagging requests to the developer, or the developer themselves, who are too busy working on Phase 2 of the complex.

Pamporovo ski apartments

The apartments in Pamporovo were about 80% furnished at the time of our first inspection. We were therefore able to stay at our apartments, although the rest of the building was by no means complete.

It was in June 2006, but we had a freak week weather-wise, and it was unusually cold and wet.

We were there for two days, so had plenty of time to compose our snagging lists. As of Nov. 2006, we have been told that all of the snagging has been completed and have also received a separately commissioned report by a snagging overseer which verified that all was taken care of. We have yet to verify this ourselves however and will be doing so in June 2007.

Update 23/2/09

Following our disasterous visit to our St.Vlas apartments at the Garden of Eden we arranged car hire and drove across Bulgaria to Pamporovo in the Rhodopi mountains. The intention of this trip was to check out our apartments and get them ready for resale. When we arrived at Cedar Heights, we were pleasantly surprised. When we last saw our apartments the complex was crawling with workmen, the site had live electricity wires dangling from the ceiling and at one point we had been locked in the building.

We were very pleased with the apartments. They were now fully furnished, clean and the standard of workmanship was acceptable. The common facilities were complete, swmming pool, gym, sauna, steam room and jacuzzi. Unfortunately the restaurant and bar were closed. This was understandable as it was outside of the ski season. At this stage were unaware of the problems to come. We decided that we would not put these apartments up for sale but try to rent them out for the forthcoming ski season (winter 07/08).

In order to do this we set up our website Bulgariaskier.com. and launched this in October 2007. In addition we placed an advert on the Owners Direct website.

Our first attempt at advertising was quite successful and we had 6 bookings arranged for the ski season. However this is when we discovered the problems which were to come.

Although our clients were happy with our apartments and the complex generally and of course Pamporovo, we discovered that the lifts in the complex weren't working, the restaurant and bar were closed and the sauna, steam room and jacuzzi weren't working. These were all the facilities we had advertised. As a result of this were were unable to accept any more bookings. We later discovered that the restaurant and bar facilities had been ripped out by the developer.

In May 2008 we made contact with other dissatisfied owners of Cedar Heights with the result that an action group was formed in order to solve the problems we had encountered. In addition we received a maintanance bill for 2008 with a 20% increase. All owners found this totally unacceptable especially due to the lack of facilities. Shortly afterwards we als discovered that the complex did not have a permament electricity supply and as a result did not have ACT 16 (the habitation license). This effectively made it illegal under Bulgarian law to live in or rent out our apartments.

In Novemeber 2008 an owner's meeting was arranged in Nottingham to discuss the complex's problems and way forward. It was decided that we needed a new management company and also ACT 16 had to be acquired. Despite numerous attempt to contact the existing management company and the selling agent, both refused to communicate. This left us with the only option of achieving a 60% vote in favour of putting in place a new management company. This was accomplished, however the existing management company changed the locks on the complex to deny access and threatened to cut off the electricity supply.

The only option we had now was for the owner's group to contact the media. In February 2009 our problems were highlighted on the BBC Watchdog program.

The selling agent who had shattered our 'dreams in Bulgaria' had ceased trading and it's director refused to answer questions posed to him.

The situation is still ongoing, however we hope that soon all owners of Cedar Heights will have full control over their complex.

St.Vlas apartments

Update 23/2/09

Our trip in June 2007 was a disaster from the point of view of our St.Vlas apartments. We went with great expectations but ended up very disappointed in what we had purchased. On arrival at the site it was still crawling with workmen. We were taken on a tour of the complex and we had to use considerable imagination in order to visualize what the complex would eventually be like. We were then taken to our apartments. What a disappointment. Our 5th floor studio apartments were entered directly from the top level of the multi-storey car park. The car park had orginally been planned as an underground car park but appears to have been raised up to the 5th floor instead. Our apartments were supposed to have panoramic sea views what we found was limited sea views. We had been told that our apartments were ready hence the reason for the trip in order to perform the snagging. Both apartments had workmen working in them, one apartment was being used as a store room for wood materials. We were unable to perform the snagging which effectively made the trip a complete waste of time. Needless to say we were very angry and disappointed.

On our return to the UK we contacted Eden with our complaints. After 6 months of trying to negotiate with them over the difference between how our apartments were orginally advertised and what we actually got, we basically got nowhere and gave up and decided to place our apartments up for resale.

In June 2008 we went to the Eden Opening Party, this was a chance to see the completed complex and also see if we felt any differently about our apartments. Although obviously the location of the apartments wouldn't have changed we did feel that we had bought into a fantastic complex despite the fact that we weren't happy with our apartments. Therefore for the time being we have decided not to sell our apartments untill the property martket improves.