Did you see the episode of the BBC2 program ‘How to pay off your mortgage in 2 years’. In this episode the man of the family travelled to Bansko, Bulgaria looking for an investment property. I am not sure of how much he had to spend but he was taken to view a number of properties by an agent from an ‘un-named’ agency and charged a whopping 1000 Euros for the privilege of doing so. Now this in itself should have started alarm bells ringing.
Many agencies in Bulgaria, both Bulgarian and British owned charge a viewing fee. Some charge a set fee for a day’s viewing while some charge per mile you need to drive to view properties. Now why should you pay for the privilege of looking at properties you are considering buying. The reasoning behind this practice seems to be that there are so many time wasters just viewing properties when they have no real intention of buying anything. But how true is this? Most foreigners going to Bulgaria have at least some interest in investing in property over there as they have all been bombarded with the same hype over the last couple of years.
So this guy I mentioned above settled on a couple of...