Cost of house renovation

Hi regardless of any work you are considering undertaking, you will need to also bare in mind security of your property.
Based on my own experience I had various renovation work done from the floor to the rooftop, and with 95% complete a workman laying wood floorboards accidentally left open a window, out walked the bathroom suite & boiler, then a water pump, and the electrics pulled out just to strip for a bit of measly copper wire!!
with UPVC windows and doors fitted and window locks it still was not a deterrent.
I know that you said you are hoping to do your own renovation and need a rough idea of cost, I just wanted to warn you of potential security risks so that you don't fall foul too.
Good luck with the new venture.

Thanks for the warning, Stepool1970. We appreciate any information we can get.

What about starting a renovation company using local skilled trades? Possible?

For rough idea of materials costs you could look at the website of praktiker.bg

This will give you a   higher costing than buying your materials locally.

What is not mentioned here, regarding the security issues i that you have to plan in advance and carefully select where to buy.

If you are buying a house in a region, populated with gypsies, then all security risks will come true and even more. If you so much insist in living in a place with significant gypsy population, then at least take care of selecting a house with only Bulgarian neighbours. This will greatly  reduce the risks of breaking in your house and stealing your property.

In all cases I strongly advice to avoid such regions - things will not improve with gypsies, they will only aggravate.

Hi,

How to know if a region is populated with gypsies?

Mahir2020 wrote:

Hi,

How to know if a region is populated with gypsies?

Find a group of racist idiots in a bar and see how loudly they complain. Anything over 60db means there are at least 2 gypsy families in the area.

There's another good approach - ask the locals. It could be either the taxi/bus driver, or the shop assisstant, or the local policeman, or your neighbours.

You will get all the information you need.

Unless you have extensive experience you ought to avoid this project.   If you wish to proceed, be sure you have the property researched by an Attorney and closed with a Notary, otherwise you can expect your hard work and money to be claimed by someone else when you finish.

Depending on where you are located consider access to materials and supplies.  Many supply companies are located in Plovdic and will deliver for a fee.   Having complete security is a must otherwise it is guaranteed that materials will be pilferred.  Consider hiring a night watchman and focus on only one project at a time so that you do not have materials lying around causing temptations.

As for skill and quality I have found it difficult to locate a worker with high standards, meaning what may be acceptable to a Gypsy may not be acceptable to you.  Fortunatly I did locate one however it took a lot of time to complete each task. 

Good luck!

@Kristiann

Do you have some kind of a current list regarding The areas where most of the Gypsies prefer to live ?

This is a very interesting thread too , regarding what could happen if one chooses wrong area due to inexperience etc ...

Many thanks

Helolo everyone,

Please note that some off-topic posts have been put aside from this thread.

Regards

Bhavna

@LoveActually

You'd be more successful asking for the - far shorter - list of where they DON'T live; the vast majority of villages will have some/a lot, and all towns/cities have their own Roma quarter. However, just because a given village doesn't have any living there at any given time doesn't mean that the situation will stay that way. You also have to bear in mind that there are "night visitors" to be wary of, as well as people who will note your movements and regular habits; you might be surprised at how quickly they can be in and out. These folks also know about security cameras and are careful not to have their faces visible (and will even swipe your cameras if they're good ones).

You need somewhere secure to store tools, of course, but materials are also regarded as fair game by the light-fingered fraternity. Be aware that, like in most countries nowadays, thieves have a tendency to resort to violence if a householder catches them in the act, so think before you try to intervene: making a lot of noise to give them a chance to scarper is the best course of action, however much you might want to share your thoughts with them.  And BG prisons aren't as cushy as UK ones, so don't be tempted to do a Tony Martin!

@stepool1970

Hi can I ask which village you live in?

I've been looking at a house online, which has been renovated. I don't know the logistics of it, whether it was a holiday home, whether the owners had to leave for some reason, but the house has been stripped. Upvc windows and doors have gone, there are no internal fittings left and the electric wiring has been stripped out, presumably for the copper.

Obviously this was reflected in the price, but sadly living in a village like that, as a lone female, is not a risk I'd be willing to take.

I dont know if this is an option, but maybe we could have a page where people list their village and their experiences of living there...just a thought...

@grumpyoldbird

He(?) hasn't posted on this forum in the last 4 years - you may have to wait a long time for a reply....

@grumpyoldbird

It's the risk you take when you leave a property unoccupied - or even just choose the wrong location.  There are quite literally thousands of such cases, and not just in foreign-owned properties.  No-one even bothers to report them to the police any more, as there's no chance of getting any of it back.  Nonetheless, you'll get plenty of people telling you that it's "not worth bothering with insurance" - maybe they're just richer than the rest of us, or being robbed by "the less fortunate" is a way of boosting their Champagne Socialist street cred....

Socialist but I've never had champagne, when we bought our village house the estate agent told us that there was a lot of Roma living in the village but that they're mainly in paid employment and will have more stuff than us. Which has proved to be the case I'm here now on my own for now and I say hello to everyone regardless and thankfully I've never had problems. Unless you count the drunk older Roma men that used to hang around my gate in the early morning but they soon stopped when they found out that I was married.

@Kath948381

I'm sure that one doesn't need to be drunk to hang around your gate, Kath - though the "married" part IS a bit of a downer...

Oh Jim I forgot to add happily married but he's twelve years younger than me with a ICD and an only child who feel obligated to stay in the UK to look after his elderly mother. Thankfully I haven't brought up my son's from my first marriage to be the same.

@JimJ

Who have you got your house insurance policy with for your Bulgarian Houses / investment properties ( abroad ) ? You mentioned its a UK Company in another thread .

I'm also interested in how to get better house insurance. Apparently Bulgarian insurance is a waste of money as they won't pay out. My first thought was "Don't bother." Then I realised that though our village house isn't worth a huge amount, we intend to make it our sole home and wouldn't be easily able to afford to rebuild it if some catastrophe occured.

@JimJ

I'd never risk not having insurance, but it does concern me that it would be very easy to make a mistake. I have a friend in Bulgaria, who bought their first house and didn't know the village. Sadly they lived to regret it, but sold it online, unseen by the purchaser. I wouldn't buy a house unseen, but ending up in the wrong village is a scary thought.

I often see beautiful houses for sale, that has obviously been a labour of love and it always makes me wonder why they'd sell it....🤔

@grumpyoldbird

You'd be surprised how many foreigners come to live in Bulgaria without thinking things through: they forget that they have grandchildren in their country of origin, or they discover that there's a lot of burglary in most villages, or they need medical treatment/medication and find that it costs money if you want the best, or they're fed up with Johnny Foreigner not bothering to learn English to communicate with them when they come into contact with authority or try to have a real conversation with the neighbours.  Other factors are being ripped off by their fellow-countrymen while pretending to help them or claiming to be skilled builders/electricians etc.

Chances are, they paid too much for their property to begin with and then compounded the mistake by hiring builders who had no idea what they were doing and were "masters" at chiselling money out of unsuspecting punters.  When they REALLY want to leave, they'll eventually take whatever they're offered for their property, rather than the fantastical sums they thought they'd get for their often quite pleasant homes.  Back in the day, there were bargains galore but now most of those who were never going to make a go of it have already left, so you'll usually have to be in the right place at the right time to make a killing

The days of affordable properties and great bargains in Bulgaria are long gone indeed and what's on the market currently is generally not worth it: poor quality for a high price and high renovation costs.

The British buying old properties to renovate in villages close to the Black Sea seems to be a thing of the past. This was a big thing when Bulgaria came into the EU but they started leaving around 2015. In some villages, the Roma population starting moving in after the British left and the houses there lost almost all of their value. My wife knows Bulgarians whose house dropped from €70k to 7k and there are horses from the Roma grazing on their land now.

It's easy to get burned dealing with Bulgarian property 'investments'.

It's easy to get burned dealing with Bulgarian property 'investments'.
   

    -@GoingDutch

Of course it is - but that's the nature of "investments" in anything. Of course, we're not using the right term here, because we're really talking about property speculation. That's something we must never lose sight of: snapping up that "bargain" that I'm the only person smart enough to recognise is a diamond in the rough is in reality a gamble: when I try to polish it for sale/rental I may discover that it's the proverbial t*rd rather than a gem.

But that's all to the good, from the viewpoint of a canny speculator, because many people believe that they're "investing" in a Bulgarian property without taking the necessary systematic approach to assessing its current potential and future value, and allowing their enthusiasm to blind them to the level of risk they're incurring - or even the varied nature of the risk. Once cold, hard reality hits they realise they've made a big mistake and eventually they'll sell at a loss - and that's where a speculator can step in and make a killing. I used to think that it was profiteering on the back of someone's misfortune but in fact you're doing them a favour.

So I'd agree with you that the days of the dirt-cheap bargain are probably over (although it never hurts to keep a weather eye open 😉) but there are still good bargains out there, if you look in the right place and can recognise a real opportunity when you see one.