A Guide to Financing Your New Home in Bulgaria

If you are planning in purchasing some property abroad or a new home in Bulgaria then you will want to first consider how you will go about paying for that new home or property purchase. If you are looking at home to finance that new overseas property purchase the answer is most likely going to be a mortgage. If you are going to buy a new home in Bulgaria you basically have three options in terms of paying for the home. You can pay for it your self using your savings and what ever other cash resources that you may happen to have access to. If you already own a home in your home country or somewhere else and you happen to have equity built up in that home then you can see about releasing that equity in that home by re-mortgaging and using that to pay for the new home in Bulgaria. Or you can seek out a mortgage in Bulgaria or in your home country to cover the cost of the Bulgarian property that you are interested in purchasing.

If you are planning on trying your hand at getting a local mortgage in Bulgaria you should know that the process of getting a Bulgarian mortgage are rather slow as delays seem to happen often. You should also know that you will be required by Bulgarian lenders to have a clean credit score and a rather substantial minimum income. Of course the minimum income requirement is based on Bulgarian standards. If you are trying to buy the home as a Bulgarian limited company for tax purposes you should note that not all Bulgarian lenders think of this favorably and will not offer mortgages to any Bulgarian limited companies.

The first banks to try in Bulgaria are Bulbank, First Investment Bank, DSK Bank, United Bulgarian Bank and Invest Bank. You will need to pay attention to the costs and fees such as completion fees, application fees and legal fees. These can add up quickly and turn out to be quite expensive. And if your loan application is not a successful one then you will not get the fees refunded. In Bulgaria you cannot get a mortgage for the full amount of the property value. The average ratio is about 70 percent for properties valued under 100,000 Euros, 75 percent for properties valued over that and 60 percent for properties that are new. You should also note that the terms in Bulgaria for mortgages are not as long as in the United States. The maximum period for a Bulgarian mortgage is only 20 years.