Many Bulgarian Real Estate Agents Have Disappeared

I am currently doing a lot of promotion for TheTravelBug website and have taken on someone to try and get the website better positions in the main search engines. He is doing a lot of directory submissions, article submissions, social website marketing and so on. And as part of this promotional campaign I was checking my links page to make sure that all those listed had reciprocal links back to TheTravelBug and found that many of the real estate agents that I had exchanged links with in the past, no longer existed. Their domain name did not work or just redirected to a holding page or the registrar for the domain. No doubt this is a sign of the way the real estate market has gone downhill in Bulgaria over the last couple of years. As quickly as the hundreds of estate agents sprang up to market Bulgarian properties, just as many disappeared even quicker.

Back in 2008 and early 2009 there were around 5000 real estate agents in Bulgaria, mostly concentrated on the Black Sea coast and in the ski resorts like Bansko. However, by February 2009, it was being widely reported that around half of these would face bankruptcy before the year was over. While I can find no actual figures on how many agents did go bust, clearly many have with offices closing down, websites disappearing and of course there have been the well reported cases of the large developers and agencies such as Bulgarian Dreams, MRI and Platinum Developments going under or facing severe difficulties.

Many buyers of Bulgarian Properties were left facing huge problems. At the worst end of the scale were those that had invested in developments that never materialised and lost thousands. Others may not have lost out financially but faced not being able to track down the agent they had bought off and who had held all their company paperwork and notary deeds.

For many of us involved in Bulgarian real estate and who have watched the market for years, Bulgaria’s property market bubble was bound to burst, regardless of a world recession. At one point every other shop front in places like Varna, Sunny Beach, Bansko and Veliko Turnovo was an estate agent. There was no way this could continue. Supply was always going to outstrip demand at some point and with over-inflation of prices,  problems with poor workmanship, improper planning permissions and the general mistrust of agencies and developers building, sooner or later the bubble was going to go BANG!