Bulgaria, for the best and the worst

Second tube on the highway to Bansko open

2008-12-24T16:09:00.000+02:00

The bottleneck near Dupnitsa is gone. Both tunnels are in operation the day before Christmas. It's a miracle. Not exactly. This EUR6.6m project was financed by EU funds, the Phare program for regional cooperation between Bulgaria and Greece.

The tunnel allows to bypass the Dupnitsa center on the E79 going South from Sofia to the Greek border and Thesaloniki. This is also the main and most direct road to Bansko ski resort where many foreign nationals own property.

An other nice occasion for a Christmas celebration is the opening of the South portion of the Belt highway in Sofia. Skiers and apartment owners in Bansko flying to Bulgaria will be able to avoid the nightmarish trafic jams in the city and speed off directly to their cosy ski homes.

Know your seller...

2008-12-09T12:40:00.000+02:00

The Bulgarian language daily 24 chasa reports the following story. An unemployed gypsy from Kostinbord came home one night driving a new Mercedes registered on his name. He said it was a broker's commission for buying and reselling property in Sofia. The real estate transaction involved buying a retail store on Vitosha Blvd (top commercial location in the Bulgarian capital, think Madison Ave. in NYC). It was municipal property auction and he got lucky.

Then he signed over the store to the guy who told him what to do and where to sign (he can sign his name but he can't read on account he dropped off in kinder garden...) Since then the property has changed hands several times generating a small fortune for some smart municipal council member(s).

The transaction is being questioned by the authorities now (why not the crooked municipal guy may I ask, the paper doesn't reveal any names). It seems several juicy city properties have sold likewise in the recent years, over 1000 to be exact. Tough luck for the runners up at the next elections, not much left for sale.

So the next time you smell a below market deal in Sofia, think twice. Unless you're a gypsy...

The B.S. talk and the conservative investor

2008-03-21T09:44:00.000+02:00

Bear Stearns, the 5th investment bank on Wall Street (actually on Park Avenue but that's even better piece of real estate) almost collapsed and had to be bailed out by J.P. Morgan Chase and the Federal Reserve over the weekend of March15. That's what friends are for.

US Treasury Secretary Paulson made a string of sharp comments for the journalists. "The Fed mission is to insure orderly financial markets". He also said he had great confidence in U.S. capital markets and in the economy fundamentals which were strong. No one asked which economy fundamentals he had in mind since all production is being outsourced to Mexico and Asia except for housing which by definition is local but in not precisely in great shape.

That's where it all started last August, right? To me, how these local US mortgage problems spread out all over is still a mystery. According to a New York Times article Can't Grasp Credit Crisis? Join the Club this confusion is shared by many people.

If you're paying taxes to Uncle Sam like me and have conservatively invested pension money in an old and solid institution you may want to ask questions White House journalists are no supposed to ask. For example what happens to the bonuses the BS guys pocketed last year? What about their fiduciary duties as financial firm managers? Are there any grounds for criminal prosecution or is it business as usual? Come'n Paulson give us the bs talk again.

Roman Bath and Beyond...

2008-03-04T16:30:00.000+02:00

On a cold winter day I took off from skiing and followed my lazy instincts to Bania, the hot springs village a short drive from Bansko. The place is hardly known to the average skier or mountaineer and that's the beauty of it.

As with many spa towns in Bulgaria, in Bania you will find the public bath house running on water from a mineral spring with a long list of curative properties. The old bath house dates back from the socialist era and that's not a compliment. The Romans did a better job with the decoration and the customer service but even they declined.

So the place to soak up in Bania would be the new resort hotel called intriguingly the Roman Bath. If you're like me and own a compact sedan and not a Hummer the first hard question that comes to mind is whether to drive over the dirt driveway or to walk the 3oom mud and stones mix that separate the hotel from the main asphalt road. I went right ahead proud not to break an axle or a tailpipe smartly dodging various earth moving engines, trucks and missile carriers...

The Roman Bath is a place in part still in construction; a four-story structure surrounded by one or two bed bungalows painted in yellowish color Chemical Ali could be proud of. The mineral water pool is outdoors but covered for the season which is winter. The shape is oval or round I couldn't tell because I couldn't see the distant shore. It's smaller than Lake Michigan, don't get me wrong but it's foggier on account of the steam, which is a nice feature to have. It makes me look like Apollo in my bathing trunks.

To put them on however I had to use the locker room downstairs and that was tough. I don't know how they did it during Roman times but what I found there was half of a hokey team (mostly Russians, Czech, Bulgarians, the Romans were skiing probably that day) trying to change in something hardly larger than my walk-in closet. I counted 28 lockers, one shower, one dryer and one restroom. Needless to say the mood was jovial and very intimate indeed.

Any alternative to the Roman Bath in Bania yet? It could be. That one is right inside the village, it has a spa and wellness facilities and a 13m pool. Let's see their changing facility next time. If they have one.

The Bulgarian Political Elite, oh Brother...

2008-02-15T16:55:00.000+02:00

SOFIA (Reuters)- Over 100 Bulgarian ministers, who came to power since the fall of communism, had served as agents of the former secret police, a historical commission said on Wednesday.

Bulgaria, a European Union newcomer, has been among the last former Soviet bloc countries to deal with its painful communist past and in late 2006 approved a law to unmask members of its Cold War spy agency, Darzhavna Sigurnost.

Former agents will not have to quit their posts and will not be banned from running for political office.

Last year the commission said President Georgi Parvanov and more than 100 deputies elected to Bulgaria's parliament since 1989 had also been agents.

On Wednesday the commission published a list of 107 former agents. Some names, such as former prime minister Zhan Videnov, appear on both lists, since he was previously a deputy, before becoming a minister.

Some 30 former ministers of the interior, foreign affairs, economy, defence, energy, agriculture and culture were among
those cited in the latest list. A number of current deputy ministers in the ruling Socialist-led coalition government were also on the list.

Bulgaria, once Moscow's most loyal Soviet satellite, had one of the most notorious spy networks, implicated in plots ranging from the failed assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II to the poison umbrella killing of an exiled dissident in London.

"We see a tendency with every new government of decreasing numbers of ministers and deputy ministers who had been agents," said the commission's head Evtim Kostadinov.

Some commentators and the country's spy chief have argued that naming KGB-trained agents would be a "lethal step" against the intelligence network because many of them are still active.

###

End of story. Evtim Kostadinov, a loyal member of the police force since the early 80-ies with a grade of colonel, certainly knows how to investigate his buddies. Did he get the go ahead from Putin?

Demand for residential properties in Sofia still strong

2008-02-13T18:13:00.000+02:00

Kapital Weekly reports real estate agencies expect the upward trend of house prices in Bulgaria to continue in 2008, albeit at a slower pace. The largest residential properties market, Sofia, will not reach saturation point soon.

"I believe that price growth will slow down, but there is no chance of prices dropping because the market is still in a desperate need of homes," said Blagovest Baldev from Adaptconsult agency, as quoted by Kapital. Baldev expected prices to rise by 10-15 per cent this year. The biggest price hikes are expected for residential units in suburban areas, especially those of higher quality, while panel apartments' prices will slow.

"High demand is a thing of the past and now we will see high supply. We expect a 20 per cent increase in Sofia's residential stock and 15 per cent in the country," Mladen Mitov, from Yavlena agency, said.

At the same time, customer requirements for residential properties remain as before. Most customers buy with investment purpose, prizing good location as the most important factor. Small apartments are preferred despite the price hike.

But in the coming years, the increased supply of large scale projects will dictate market trends. Investors' interest has already turned towards peripheral areas developments, satellite villages and gated complexes. Construction quality will become a major factor for clients, Kapital weekly concludes.

Choosing Greece over Bulgaria?

2008-02-08T09:47:00.000+02:00

Bulgarians who choose holiday properties in Greece and not Bulgaria do not do so based on price.

Bulgaria is surrounded by strong competition in both the tourist and summer holiday homes sectors of Croatia, Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece. In terms of the price-to-quality ratio of real estate properties and tourist services, or even climate, Bulgaria can easily compete with Turkey, Croatia, and Cyprus. However, when it comes to property prices, and traditions in the field of tourism, Greece is still leader in the region. You can read the rest of the article here...

Bulgaria's baby boom...

2008-02-06T13:26:00.000+02:00

Day care centers in Sofia are all booked up for the next year. Parents are worried, grand parents insist on getting minimal wages or else. Private centers business is booming. The public kinder gardens can't cope with the demand. Once again the Lord Mayor has listened to the vox populi (that's latin for people's voice, makes me look smarter, I think) and set up a modern internet based registration process to level the application field for parents who can't or won't bribe the centers administrators.

The D-day was last Monday, at 9:00 a.m. sharp when parents were supposed to go ahead, log in and register their toddlers in a couple of clicks before heading for work. Not so fast! The servers dutifully went down right away, overwhelmed by the applicants and stayed "busy" for most of the day. The official explanation came on the 8:00 news: "the site was attacked by malicious hackers". Possibly the toddlers who didn't feel like leaving home? Or their teenage brothers and sisters? Nevertheless several thousand registered names were found in the computer hard drives once they went back online. Isn't that miraculous? Forget about Lourdes...

Buying property in Bansko?

2008-02-05T14:45:00.000+02:00

Bansko used to be an isolated Balkan village known to Bulgarians as the place of birth of many national figures and the "Banski starets", a dry spicy sausage. The history of Bansko goes back ages as one can tell by the high stone fences built to defend houses and households from the Ottomans. As with most mountain communities, the people of Bansko were “workaholics” before Wall Street coined the term and part of their earnings went out to bribe the local Pashas or to keep the bad guys at bay. There weren’t any “magnificent seven” peasant lovers to protect them; they had to rely on themselves. And they did well.

Nowadays Bansko is a small town of 10,000 visited by more than 400,000 skiers and holiday makers in high season. A short walk around town will show to what extend things have changes in the last years. Construction is a booming business here with no less than 30 sites open over the last 12 months. You can get a piece of a potato farm land for 200 euros the square meter, if you’re lucky, and the average price of a new apartment is 1300 euros/sqm.

If you have the itch to jump on the next plane and buy the dream Bansko apartment you have seen on the net, make sure you know exactly where it is being built. Look at the Bansko map here and you’d better get familiar with some street names and neighborhoods. As one can tell after visiting a dozen property web sites, very few publish maps but most claim they are located close both to the gondola lift and to the old Bansko. That’s one statement that doesn’t hold water when you go there and check the distances. Because the distance from the central Vaptsarov square to the lift station on my car's odometer is exactly 1740m. That’s a little bit over a mile. Not that’s a huge distance by Aspen standards but Bansko is not Aspen, the streets are narrow and the potholes tricky.

If staying close to the Gondola is a must look for the Gramadeto district. That’s the name of a small area uphill from the Bansko center, where the local people used to grow onions and potatoes. There are no more onions and potatoes in Gramadeto. It’s one big construction site with heavy trucks and cement mixers working to make new homes and biger potholes. During high season however, all heavy work is banned. The happy residents who already bought there take a short horizontal stroll to the gondola while their new ski apartments quietly appreciate under the Bansko sun.

Meanwhile downtown, coffee shops and taverns are opening up and smoke of grilled meat starts to fill up the air. There are over 400 restaurants and taverns (mehanas) in Bansko but I don’t think somebody took seriously to count them. The very pleasant pedestrian and cobble stone streets are filled with them. The cuisine is very similar all over, the service varies, so when you find a place to your taste just stick with it. In another piece I’ll pay tribute to my favorites.

Bansko real estate listings located near the old center do have a story to tell. For starters, this is what makes Bansko Bansko- the old wood houses with the thick stone fences and the smoke filled dusk. Even after a tough night at the local Irish pub you can’t mistake it for Tignes or Chamonix.

Then if you want to spent your summer time off in your new studio or to rent it out in low season, being close to the gondola doesn’t help much: the lift is shut for the summer, most hotels also. Gramadeto has this melancholic feeling about it like Brighton beach in December. At the same time the central square attracts the crowds with outdoor cafes, live music and flowers everywhere. Bansko works hard to become a year-round destination. The annual jazz festival is getting good reviews; two golf courses are being built nearby.