In Varna in the first three months twice as many new homes were sold compared to 2021.
Expectations for some cooling in the real estate market still differ from reality – housing in Bulgaria rose in price in the first quarter compared to the end of last year at most for almost 7 years, according to NSI data published on Friday.
Only for one quarter – from the end of December last year. until the end of March, the average price increase is 5.2%, which has not been the case since 2015.
At the same time, the prices of existing housing are more expensive – by 6.2%, in contrast to the newly built ones, where the increase in prices is only by 3.6%.
In general, new construction is more expensive than the old one, but the explanation for this discrepancy in growth is due to the fact that the market is very busy. With mass demand and high prices more and more people are turning to buying cheaper panels, which, of course, leads to a rise in their prices.
The annual rise in house prices literally broke the record from the fourth quarter of 2008, when the property bubble in our country had already burst. Then the annual increase in prices was 11.7%, while now it is 11.5%. In the decade following the global financial crisis, property prices have never risen by more than 4-5% on an annual basis.
The growth is now due exclusively to the six largest cities with a population of over 120,000 people, where the housing market is also the busiest.
In the capital, for example, only three months ago, house prices rose by 7.3%, and in Ruse even by 8%.
In the Danube capital of Bulgaria on an annual basis housing has risen in price by even 15.4%, which is due to new construction – his growth is 23.2%
However, it should be borne in mind that in Ruse, compared to other large cities, housing prices are still relatively low.
As of yesterday, the NSI has also started publishing data on the change in the number of transactions for the acquisition of housing by households, which have been collected since 2015, but are becoming public for the first time.
They show some cooling of the enthusiasm of buyers because the number of transactions in the first quarter decreased by 33.7% compared to the last quarter of the previous year. In general, however, January, February and March are not particularly strong for the real estate market.
At the same time, on an annual basis, the number of transactions increased by an average of 32.9%, which is again due to the market in large cities.
The record is due to Varna, where there is a 54.4% increase in the number of real estate transactions, not counting those in the resorts around the sea capital.
This growth due more to the bustling market for new construction, where there is 105.3% growth, i.e. deals with sales of new homes have doubled compared to a year earlier.
It is followed by Stara Zagora, where there is a 38.7% growth in home sales.
In the capital it is only 6.4%, but it is about 7268 transactions according to the Registry Agency, while in all other settlements are concluded many times less.
For the first three months of the year in Plovdiv a total of 3534 transactions were made, which is 3% less than the previous year. For comparison, for January – March 2021 the increase compared to the same period of the previous year was 21.3%. The explanation can be found in the boom for the last quarter of 2021, when sales were 5716, as well as in the oversaturation of the local market, which is felt in the decline in the number of building permits issued throughout 2021.
A certain surprise is Nessebar, which for the first time in a long time it enters the top 10 of the settlements in terms of the number of concluded real estate transactions, which are mainly for housing. There, the growth of confessions in the first quarter compared to a year earlier was 104.6%. However, the Registry Office in Nessebar reports the confessed deals not only in the city, but also in Ravda, Sunny Beach, Sveti Vlas and Obzor, where many holiday properties have recently been bought mainly by Bulgarian citizens, after the Russians began to sell property en masse. you are.
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