In need of contacts in Palamartsa

Hey Steve,

You will find from a few posts here that it's pretty hard to find reliable tradesmen. There are a couple of English builders kicking about on here. Have a look at the posts on the forum.

To be honest - and I'm well aware that it isn't a lot of help - you sound as though you've managed to stumble into every pitfall around: trusting a stranger who's selling you something to tell you what's wrong with it, assuming that an "estate agent" (read "property broker") has anyone's interests other than his own at heart, buying a property sight unseen, trying to get a renovation done without being there to supervise and inspect the work, asking strangers on the internet to recommend "reliable and trustworthy" people to ask for recommendations.  It sounds as though you have your hands full at home, but what you're trying to do is a recipe for yet more disappointment and wasted expenditure. Someone's idea of a great workman may well be your definition of an amateur bodger but even the best of Bulgarian builders needs constant supervision or they'll just do what they feel like/are able to.

There is a FB group for the village (search for Palamartsa.bg / Паламарца.бг) where you can read all about the frequent water stoppages and try asking about "recommended workmen".  There are apparently quite a few foreign residents there and, I believe, horror of horrors - a regular car-boot sale...

I hope you can find someone to help with this, Steve. Palamartsa and the nearby villages do have a significant expat community so it shouldn't be too hard to make contact, especially via the Facebook group.

Before you invest any more money in the place you'd really be wise to try to visit it. Is there any way you can arrange some short-term respite care for your mother? Old village houses do always tend to be in way worse condition than expected and can be money pits.

Unfortunately many property sellers don't count the annex as actually part of the house, even when it's attached! The annex to my house was still standing but had big problems, I renovated what was there but kinda wish I'd had the builders knock it down and start over rather than trying to make the old kitchen and bathroom work. So in a way, that decision's already been made for you and if you decide to stick with this property, you can get something far more suitable built in its place.

@JimJ

I got kicked off facebook for wrong think a few months ago 😭 which is why i am on this forum, i'm not totally naive and didn't go into this thing with my eyes wide shut, if i can't find any help than i'll just get some essential repairs done to the roof on the house get the windows boarded up and it can stay like that until circumstances change and i finally get over there and make a start on it myself, even if i have to live in a caravan on site for a couple of years, i know how to build. The estate agent is reasonable and has not messed me about but just like any other estate agent they only do cursory inspections of the property and communication could be better. I was simply hoping to find someone reliable to save me doing everything myself when i get there but i guess that is too much to ask for. The video of the house is still up on YT so you can judge for the yourself if you care to investigate, i'm not naming any names but a little tip is that i didn't buy it from a fella with a 'Sonny disposition', i bought from the other well known estate agents based in Popovo.😎

@janemulberry

Hi Jane, Thanks for the reply, the actual main house is in pretty good condtion and well built so it's not the end of the world as long as the roof has some essential maintenance done to it. Unfortunately it is impossible for me to get over there even for a short visit, we live out in the Swedish countryside and i had to quit my job a few years ago to care for my mum full time, she is 87 and virtually immobile now, i wasn't even really intending to buy a house this early but what with the Euro coming in next year and this being the only house that really ticked the boxes for me after watching every house that came on the market over the past few years i had to go and pull the trigger on it. I've not fell out with the estate agent/builder, just expressed my dissapointment at the lack of thoroughness of his inspection of the property, best not to burn your bridges and all that, he's still going to fix the roof on the house but after that i think i'm drawing a line under any further work before i fall into the money pit trap which can happen all too easily.

@stevedgreenwood

Well done looking after your mum. I spent the last couple of years caring for my father, and I found it very time-consuming and stressful. But I was helped by Bulgarian live-in carers, not doing it all myself like you seem to be doing. Even with the paid carers, I had to be around pretty much every day, so I barely got to even SEE our village house during that time, let alone do any work on the place!

Less well done on the house purchase. Sorry to sound harsh/discouraging, but it seems that you may well have bitten off far more than you can chew. I would personally be extremely reluctant to do ANY work on a property remotely, as I'd have no control over the materials chosen, the quality of the work done (if it even gets done), or judging whether the builder's charges were reasonable. You might, of course, get lucky and find a trustworthy and decent quality builder (who doesn't charge much), but it's a very risky option. Moreover, a cheap Bulgarian village house will need significant ongoing maintenance AND renovation. Even very basic stuff like the garden gets completely out of control within a year, so just finding someone to keep that in check is not easy (or cheap).

If you're thinking of relocating your mother to Bulgaria (I moved my dad here when he was 97), or you anticipate your Bulgarian retirement is only a year or two away, you have a more plausible time frame. If you think you'll likely be in Sweden for another 5-15 years, then it seems implausible/imprudent to keep your house in a decent state until then.

Also... how will you relocate to Bulgaria? Based on your (future) pension? Or your mother's pension (and family reunification)? Or your Swedish permanent residence permit?

Depending on your time frame, I suggest that you consider that you may have been over-optimistic, and cut your losses (i.e. don't pay for any renovation work, get your agent to resell your property to someone who plans to live there immediately). This is especially the case if you can't free up even a couple of days to get over to Bulgaria to judge for yourself how good/bad the house AND locale is, and its potential for your future life here. It might be less painful to lose a couple of grand today, rather than spend thousands every year for the next x years... as well as deal with enormous stress and aggravation... just to rock up here in 10 years and take one look at the village and think "oops".

@gwynj

Hi, After consideration i am not going to get any further renovation work done on the house, i simply cannot trust the builder to do the work at a fair price or correctly, only essential maintenance on the roof,  i will then instruct the him to board up the windows and make it secure and have it checked over every 6 months and have the garden kept under control, i will reside in Sweden until my mother passes, how ever long that takes, finances are not an issue and i own the Swedish house outright and it has more than trebled in value during the fifteen years i have lived here. I knew i was buying prematurely in BG but the house really is just the right size for me and my future plans and in the right location, i will not be taking any knee jerk reactions and getting rid of it because the annex walls have fallen down, it's all very dissapointing but i'll just deal with it, all i really want now is to make some contacts in Palamartsa other than the esate agent, the house next door to mine has just been fully renovated and i'm sure they must speak English, i asked the estate agent about them but he said he doesn't know them and he minds his own business (he also lives in Palamartsa) not very helpful, that's why i need some decent contacts so i could at least get to know the next door neighbours, it's all a bit frustrating.

Steve, it's unfortunate that Facebook isn't an option for you, because that would probably be the most useful place to make a local expat contact.

I did a search of this forum for Palamartsa and not a lot came up, however in this thread, @ashadu (who I believe ended up buying somewhere else in Bg) mentioned making contact with someone there https://www.expat.com/en/forum/europe/b … at-it.html

You could direct message them via the forum to ask if they would pass your contact details on to their contact.

@janemulberry

Thanks for looking Jane, yes it's frustrating not having access to facebook anymore, i apparently violated some community guideline but they never told me what, i can look at the facebook pages without logging in but can obviously not interact with them, As i said to the other person who replied to this thread i would really like to try and make contact with the next door neighbours who have renovated their house, i think they live there full time, one option is to ring one of the guest houses in Palamartsa, there are three and all English run i believe, maybe they can put me in contact with the mayor or they know the neighbours, it's worth a shot.

@stevedgreenwood

Did you get a 30 day ban? I've had plenty of them; that's why I have a couple of accounts to fall back on.

@SimCityAT

No i got perma banned for violating community guidelines whatever they are, they never gave me an actual reason, i had a couple of other accounts and they shut those down as well, about a month later a friend opened a new account for me using her phone, a totally different email and a made up name, it only lasted twelve hours, i rejoined a couple of groups i was in before and checked out the usual pages i frequented and that was enough for algorithm to put two and two together and shut that down as well, it's a shit platform but i do miss marketplace.

@stevedgreenwood

Community guidelines are those boring things that you agree to abide by when you join social media groups - you know, like the laws that govern behaviour and speech in real life to enable people to live together in a society. You signed up for them, several times, when you joined FB as different people, just as you agreed that you'd read and would conform to the guidelines/rules here.

I imagine that you're just being disingenuous in your remarks about not knowing what community guidelines are or why you were banned from FB. It's neither easy nor common to be erroneously and permanently banned from the platform: some of us have been temporarily "muted" or even suspended, but for the most part we're pretty well aware of why that happened, even if we pretend to have no idea what we've done. It's no secret that social media sites in general track users' activity and often make money selling information about them to advertisers etc. Giving over THREE BILLION Facebook users a month free access to your systems and servers is an expensive business, with the stress on "business", and that's not counting Meta's other social media platforms. They're under constant attack and have ways of detecting who and where you are; gaming the system successfully is a little harder than just getting another email address and inventing a new user ID....😁

@JimJ, I agree that starting new IDs to get around group bans is absolutely against the rules and not a good thing to do. It also shows that someone may have a disregard for following the guidelines.

But getting banned in the first place -- I do think it's possible that someone can think they're doing everything right and get banned and never know why. I am not banned from Facebook, but hardly ever use it anymore. When I used to actively use it I had numerous temporary bans for posting the same thing in several groups, eg lost cat post in all the local area groups, new book launch post in several book groups. Sometimes they give a "You're posting too fast" warning, sometimes they just whack on a temporary ban. And I got an absolute and permanent ban from advertising on Facebook back in 2019 or 2020 (whatever year the Orange Man first ran for president), for reasons that have never been explained. Just "guideline violations". They never did tell me what I did wrong, and I truly have no idea. I don't think I did break any guidelines, it was just to do with the political climate at that time. My ad account was never reinstated despite multiple appeals.

@janemulberry

C'mon, Jane - 'fess up!  You know very well why you were banned.....should I just mention "jolly jumbuck", "tucker bag" and "billabong"? 😎😂

LOL! I didn't know it was illegal to talk 'Strine on FB! And I'm definitely not a sheep duffer.

Oh damn, Steve has gone.

Since Saturday, my Facebook account has been suspended twice. Saturday, it was for fraud. 2 days for it to be investigated. I got it back, and this morning suspended for Money laundering. So another day or 2 without my main account. I do have 2nd account to fall back on, which I have had since 2014.

It's just as well I am an Admin with both my pages on the groups I run. To be honest, I am getting quite bored with Facebook itself. I just use it for a business page and groups. I use WhatsApp to keep in contact with family now. 

Oh damn, Steve has gone.
Since Saturday, my Facebook account has been suspended twice. Saturday, it was for fraud. 2 days for it to be investigated. I got it back, and this morning suspended for Money laundering. So another day or 2 without my main account. I do have 2nd account to fall back on, which I have had since 2014.

It's just as well I am an Admin with both my pages on the groups I run. To be honest, I am getting quite bored with Facebook itself. I just use it for a business page and groups. I use WhatsApp to keep in contact with family now. - @SimCityAT

Never mind all that stuff - what are your commission rates; I have a suitcase full of cash that needs "cleaning up"...😎

@SimCityAT, Facebook seem to let the spammers and scammers roam their little empire freely while shutting down legitimate business, unfortunately. Even some quite well-known businesses have had their pages shut down for no apparent reason. I have a personal account and a business account and rarely use either now. I do still use Messenger, because that's what people I work with use. I hope you get your account back with no problem.

@janemulberry

I call it a business, but it's not, I just operate the page as one, an English Meet Up Group in our town. We have a WhatsApp chat group, but people aren't added to that until we know them and have come along a few times.  But we do advertise the group with a WhatsApp number, as I have a separate phone for that with a Business WhatsApp. account.

But with my Facebook account being reported, is someone I know who has been doing it to others. I'm sure Facebook will get wise to him, and he will end up having his account blocked.

Hmm, a local Meet-Up group as a front for money laundering?  It's a bit of a stretch of credibility!

@GuestPoster5673

Hi there Steve

You seem to have gone but in case you still see this

We met a lovely lady in Ireland (where we were house sitting last year) who had a friend around Palarmatsa / Popovo. We met up with this friend of hers. We also had chats with the new young couple who had started an airbnb where we stayed for our few days in the Popovo area. If you pm me I can give your details on to both of these people.

Cheers

Ashley

@AshAdu

Steve is no longer a member on the site.

@AshAdu

Unfortunately unless Steve rejoins he won't see your post or be able to PM you. Hopefully he's been able to find ways to contact the guesthouse owners.