Changing Places, Part 3

As regular readers of my blog will know, I am a great fan of Bosch. They make some great kitchen appliances (washing machines, coffee grinders, toasters and so on). My wife and I have bought quite a few Bosch things.

However, I am now a fan of Yantra Homes as well because this estate agency gave us some excellent service when we went to Veliko Tarnovo for our house-hunting expedition. 

We saw quite a few properties and most of them we did not really like. Yes, they looked great in the photos, but they were not so wonderful when you actually went to the houses and saw how they really are. 

The side of the house and you can see the massive wooden gate.

There was, however, one splendid exception. There was one house that actually looked a lot better in real life than it does in the photos!

The bad news? Yes, there is some. First of all, it is a bit further from Veliko Tarnovo than we had wanted (50 km or thereabouts) and, at 81,000 euros, it is costing us more than we had wanted to pay. Another problem is that we cannot move in until the end of August or even September, as the vendor now has to find another property to buy.

The garden fence and one of the paddocks.

The house in Daveri is great. It really was “love at first sight”. Irena and I both decided, almost as soon as we got out of the agent's car, that this was the house that we really wanted to buy.  We loved the old-fashioned wooden balcony because it is HUGE and it is on two sides of the house. The traditional gate is also huge and very solid-looking. The bottom part of the house is stone and the house combines what is best about an old style of Bulgarian architecture with what is modern and new. The garden and the adjoining land are about 3,000 square metres, so there is a bit of space. Irena wants to plant an orchard and she also wants to have a sauna in one of the outbuildings. 
An added bonus is that the house is not far from Elena, a most beautiful and historic town, with some lovely old houses and quaint churches. It is also just a few kilometres from a winery at Maryan!

Well, we have signed the preliminary contracts and I have paid the 10% deposit, as well as the agent's commission, so now we are hoping that the purchase will now go through smoothly at the end of August. 

My apologies for the funny marks on the photos. These are the pictures from the Yantra Homes website, but before too long we hope to have plenty of photos our own!

This is the view of the back of the house, from the garden fence.

This is the front of the house and the front door is on the right.

 By way of contrast, I spent some time looking at properties that are for sale on the website for Wimpey homes in the UK. What a blooming rip-off! £450,000 for a three-bedroomed house, but the garden looks like a postage stamp and of course there is no view. Your British house will be squashed, cramped and surrounded by similar houses, all built as cheaply as possible, with no character or individuality. Whereas houses in Bulgaria are solidly built, with thick walls and double glazing, houses in the UK are so shoddily built that they are often cold and draughty in the winter. Even Bulgarian bricks are superior to British ones, as the BG bricks are bigger and so have large pockets of air inside them, so that they provide good insulation. 

Outbuildings and the greenhouse

The other little difference between buying a property in the UK and buying one in Bulgaria is a small and almost insignificant thing that I may perhaps have forgotten to mention: the price. We are selling our large country house in Kalotina (three bedrooms, central heating, insulation, garage and a beautiful location) for 40,000 euros, but you will not be able to buy anything in southern or central England for less than £200,000. Maybe £300,000 would be more accurate. 

As well as the actual price of the property, there are also all of the hidden costs, such as how much (and how long) you will have to pay if you are going to borrow 80% or even 90% of the total price of the property. Irena and I managed to save some money during our five years in China and that means that we do not have to borrow any money. Being able to pay cash makes things simpler and you do not have to worry about silly things like mortgages and interest rates.

The balcony is big!

Of course, lots of estate agents, solicitors and mortgage brokers will all tell you that buying a house in the UK is a really good idea. (What a wonderful thing it is to have such helpful, free and impartial advice!) In some ways, they are absolutely right because property prices in the UK just keep on rising, whereas in Bulgaria they are flat or even falling. But what is a house or an apartment really for? If you simply cannot afford to buy something nice, does it ever make sense to buy an expensive property that you don't really like? Well, perhaps it might do, if you want to be close to your friends and family, I suppose.