Bulgarian Village Homes Ltd is a British owned and managed Estate Agency specialising in affordable Bulgarian property. With an extensive real estate  portfolio you will find excellent investment properties for sale on the Black Sea coast, in the ski resorts and the mountain spa towns. We offer exactly the same service levels that you would expect to receive in the UK but for a lot less – 3% or £949 (whichever is greater). Our fee is payable upon completion of the preliminary contract.

Who we are

Where we are

Why General Toshevo?

‘Location, location, location-  plus amenities’

In addition to its proximity to the coast and Romania, it is also less than a 40 minute drive (45m) on a recently upgraded road from Varna International Airport. Varna is Bulgaria’s third-largest city and the biggest on the Black Sea. The airport is open all-year round, unlike Bourgas, and since Easter 2006 BA have been flying thrice-weekly scheduled flights from Heathrow. Also, the budget airline, Skyeurope, began flights in June  2006 (from Stansted via Budapest). As an alternative, Constanta is actually quicker to get to from GT than Varna! The road across the border at Kardam is excellent and dual carraigeway much of the way whilst the border crossing point is a breeze. In addition, on 18th April 2008, Ryan Air began weekly flights to and fro on a Friday from Pisa, Italy, with connecting UK and Ireland flights from Birmingham, Bournemouth, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and London Stansted. Prices for the inaugural flight were 56 euro including taxes for a return ticket.

Varna has practically everything on offer that you would expect back home including stores such as Praktiker, Mr. Briccolage, Piccadilly and Technomarket. In the UK these are equivalent to B&Q, Travis Perkins, Tesco and Dixons.  Plus they all take credit cards – a Bulgarian rarity!

The regional capital, Dobrich town, is on the main Varna-Romania road and is only 12m from GT.  As the main administrative centre here you will find the regional court (registering your company) and Customs & Excise house (container import). There are also plenty of builders merchants, restaurants and supermarkets. Most of what you want you will find in Dobrich.

General Toshevo is a lively little town with a dozen or so bars/restaurants, four banks, accountancy and law firms, a police station, post office, bus and railway stations and the usual array of shops including electricity office and water board. GT also has a mains gas supply and has even entered the modern communications age – broadband is available via cable ( www.toshevo.net ). How do you think we are connected?!  

Depending on who you are and what you want GT has something for everyone. If you have a young family and want to emigrate, GT has nursery, primary and secondary schools. On the other hand, you may be thinking about retiring. Health and transport concerns need to be taken into consideration. Fear not! GT has a hospital, two dentists and two pharmacies. The health service in Bulgaria is first-class and very cheap. To give you an idea, prescription drugs are about 1/10 of the price back home!

If you have a car there are six petrol stations in town, two open 24hrs. If not, don’t worry, space-age trains travel back-and-forth to Varna and buses go to and from Dobrich every half-hour (2 leva or less than 75p single!). Buses leave GT for the coast (Kavarna) three times a day - 6.30 am, noon and 3.30 pm, returning one hour later. Next to the bus station is a taxi rank – work on 1 lev per kilometre for short distances under 10k, but it's only 8 leva per car to Dobrich and about 50 leva (£15) for the airport run. All the cabs have mobile phones and they don’t have pick up charges.

The properties we sell

As a country Bulgaria has many problems but two of the most significant are poverty and ill-health. Now it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the two go hand-in-hand. The collapse of Communism in 1989 came as a great shock. State industries which kept the population in a state of full employment collapsed overnight and many people were plunged into unemployment and poverty. However, there was some bright news – under Communism practically everybody was given an apartment or house and now, under the transition to a free-market democracy, they OWNED them!

Now Bulgaria is no different from most countries in the western world in the sense that most people’s wealth is tied up in their house. So we have a situation where many Bulgarians are asset ‘rich’ (house paid for) but cash ‘poor’ (either unemployed or living on a subsistence wage/pension). So, how do you realise your wealth? Simple – sell the asset! Here endeth the economics lesson.

Now for a taste of real life… Bulgaria is still a very agrarian society with agriculture being by far the biggest employer, particularly so in the Dobrich region which is known as the ’breadbasket of Bulgaria’. Most people lived and worked in the villages where they were born but with the collapse of the state-run collective farms, the jobs for life disappeared. What is now happening is that the young people leave the villages to find work in Dobrich or Varna. They leave their parents but not for good. As their parents age ill-health becomes a problem. The old folk need to move to a town/city for hospital treatment. At this point they move in with their son/daughter and the former family home is put up for sale. The alternative is that they remain in their village but, after a time, one dies and the surviving mother/father then moves to live with their son/daughter. Again, the house is put up for sale. Sad but true…as all the black bereavement ribbons on houses testify.

So, put simply, we locate these houses for you. Initially we focused on the Dobrich region but since the summer of 2006 we have been creating a network of agents throughout BG. Kieran Muelaner was the first to join up. Kieran speaks Bulgarian and covers the Razgrad region near the Danube. Joining us in early 2007 was Petar Shipkov who looks after Sofia region. who covers the Silistra Region on the Danube. At Easter Patrick King and his Bulgarian girlfriend, Galia, took on the agency for the Pleven Region. Shortly afterwards Ronnie Cruickshank became our fifth agent. Ronnie and his partner Jill run the lovely Resen Lodge guest house (www.resenlodge.com) and represent BVH in Veliko Tarnovo region alongside Mirela Velichkova who handles the city of Veliko Tarnovo itself. 

From summer 2007 we welcomed Snezhana Ognyanova. Having lived in London for 11 years, Sneza not only speaks fluent English but knows what our standards & expectations are. She is our representative in the Blagoevgrad Region, south of Sofia towards Greece, and Kyustendil, the region SW of Sofia.  Sneza was born and brought up in the region and knows Kyustendil like the back of her hand. Cathi Morgan came on board in August 2008 to cover the Silistra Region on the Danube, in the extreme NE of the country. In September we were joined by Cara Lomax and her soon-to-be-husband, Mark Barrett, who are handling the area around Palamartsa village, near Popovo, Targovishte, in north/central Bulgaria.  January 2009 saw Adele Richards come on board to take care of the area west of Popovo and in March, Gemma Stevenson signed up to cover the area east and north of Popovo.

All in all we are easy-going people who simply sell houses in nice villages which, easily renovated, will be your  new ‘home’.

We DO NOT

• Sell agricultural, commercial or office land/developments
• Sell off-plan developments

We do (as part of the sale)

• Complete the legal transfer of title and deeds on your home or regulated land to your Bulgarian company
• Complete the registration of your company
• Complete the registration of your company and property for state taxation purposes

We can (as part of the after-sales service)

• Arrange for your utilities to be connected (gas, water, electricity)

The homes you buy

Let’s be honest with each other here. For a moment forget all the sun, sea, sand and ski that Bulgaria has to offer and ask yourself this – If you were a billionaire would you be buying in Bulgaria? Of course not! You’d be wintering in the Caribbean and spending summers in the South of France or Spain. But the reality is we are not billionaires. Having spoken to hundreds of Brits in Bulgaria over the past few years there are two recurring reasons why you are now looking to buy here.

Either –

a)   you’ve missed the property boom back home but want to invest in a sure-fire winner and see a property abroad as your ‘pension’ or..
b)   you’ve cashed in but now find, even with ‘downsizing’ that you can’t afford a house in the UK and a second property in France, Italy or Spain.

Basically, you are looking for value-for-money and that’s what we give you. The vast majority of our houses are in the £5k - £20k range. Don’t expect a beachside villa with a pool, gymnasium and sauna because you won’t get it for that money – not anywhere in Bulgaria. Nor will we try to sell you a chicken shack in the middle of a field miles from nowhere. In all probability what you will find is what we specialise in - solid two/three-bedroom bungalows in nice villages close to all amenities. None of our properties in the Dobich or Varna regions are further than a one-hour drive from Varna airport and the Black Sea coast. And that’s a promise!

Also, the properties in Ruse and Silistra are easily accessable from Bucharest International airport (c. 40m from Ruse) and the Razgrad region is only one hour west of Varna International airport. Blagoevgrad Region has excellent communications being on the main Sofia-Athens highway (recently upgraded) and the railway link, electrified in 2002. Most of the properties will be within two hours maximum of Sofia airport.