Tuesday, June 24, 2014

House hunting holiday. Part 1.

Our first couple of days were spent visiting Sofia (we didn't go last time) and Lake Batak. Sofia was a pleasant city - we loved the underground ancient city and the cheap beers and banitsa. Canape Connection (the hostel we stayed in) was really cool and we found a great vegetarian restaurant - which we certainly didn't expect in Bulgaria!


 
At Batak we stopped one night at Eco Camping Batak, which was a very nice campsite in a fantastic location. Unfortunetly it was a bit wet but we had a nice evening a great (and so cheap!) meal out in the village. We also took note of the cool eco toilet and shower block.
 
The next morning we drove a couple of hours to Chirpan to meet the Cheap-Bulgarian-Houses estate agent. We met a friendly couple - M (Polish, living and working in Bulgaria over ten years) and D (English, living in Bulgaria around four years). We told them in more detail about what we had in our minds and they decided to show us a few properties that we hadn't actually asked to see. Happy with this we drove off into the hills, passing lavender fields and wild flowers, to a few small villages North of Chirpan. The area is gorgeous - rolling greens hills and pretty stone houses. There is a big hotel being built just outside Chirpan which shows there is development in this area (very important as many villages get abandoned and loose power and water) and a new motorway to Istanbul being built. Also it is about half way across Bulgaria, between Bourgas and Sofia, and we know from personal experience that a campsite is well needed here unless you want to cross the whole country in one day. It was all very ideal.

We spent the day viewing about 8 properties (actually only 1 we'd chosen online!) The prices ranged from 6000 to 12000 GBP and the conditions also varied. Nothing we viewed had any kind of toilet and some didn't even have floors. Some were old and rustic, one new and un-finished (literally just bricks). Luckily it was exactly what we were expecting so we weren't too shocked. Anyway we like a challenge. We also visited M and D's house to see the end result of a renovation, which was really good to see.  We loved the area and some of the properties were interesting but nothing blew us away. There was one property we quite liked but we didn't have the keys for. (Actually this was quite normal - we climbed through several windows that day!) M and D said they did have the keys though so we could visit again the next day. After a long day and a lovely evening we went to sleep in our posh hotel room.    




Some of the properties we viewed.


 

Friday, June 20, 2014

Preparing for our first trip.

So the first thing we did was start searching the internet for properties in Bulagria. We had been told the best way to buy property was to just go out there and start speaking to locals - this way you would get the best deal. This was exactly what we would do when we had the money and time to go out there, but for now we wanted to get an idea of what you could get for your money. Of course we don't speak any Bulgarian (yet) so we were limited to UK run estate agents. We are still not sure if this is better or worse than Bulgarian run estate agents but at least we could read them. The three main sites I looked at were Rightmove, Cheap-Bulgarian-Houses and Bulgarian Properties.
 
We had decided we wanted to look in the Blagoevgrad Province as we had driven through here and thought it was absolutely stunning. It is also close to Sofia and en-route to Greece with a very good road - an excellent location for our business. But of course this is all taken into account which means that property prices were a just out of our reach. So we started looking else where. I found that there seemed to be certain locations that were cheaper (North - near the Danube, around Veliko Tarnovo, around Yambol etc) but none of these areas appealed to us. In the end we just decided to look in South Central Bulgaria and hope for the best.
 
We have a rough budget of 15000 GBP and want a house with minimum of one acre of land. From looking online we began to realise this was very reasonable.
 
Once we had saved enough money we booked a weeks holiday to Bulgaria with a hire car. We wanted just to look around and try and find an area we liked. In the end I decided to organise a few viewings through the internet so we could see what kind of state these properties were in and see how they compared in real life to the photos on the website. We organised two days with Cheap-Bulgarian-Houses and one day with Brits2Bulgaria (found via Rightmove website). After thinking more about it we decided that it would be much easier to do everything through an estate agent, if possible, as we currently have neither the time nor money to hang out in Bulgaria for months talking to mayors of villages.
 
Then suddenly it was early June already and were off to Sofia to meet with estate agents, like two real grown-ups, not really knowing what to expect. 

Welcome.

Eco Camping Batak






After our tour of Europe last year (http://mintyandpeter.blogspot.co.uk/p/our-adventure.html) Pete and I have decided to move to Bulgaria to set up a campsite. Running a campsite/B&B and living as self-sufficiently as possible is something we have both wanted to do for a long time and Bulgaria seems the perfect place to do it. We chose the country because it is green and beautiful with good beaches, awe inspiring mountains, historical towns and friendly locals. It is very rural but still has supermarkets and good roads, so we can realistically live there. As well as all this the price for property is very low, especially compared to the UK where we would never be able to live our dream.
 
I have decided to write a blog about our journey to find, buy and live in our perfect place in Bulgaria. This is mainly for us to keep a record and for friends and family to follow us, but could be helpful to someone planning to do something similar themselves. Please read..!   



Above is where our village is. Izvorovo, Chirpan. ^



And this is our 'U' of 2 acres of land. Including a house, barn and walnut orchard!