Property management in Bulgaria

You can buy property in Bulgaria for permanent living, summer vacation. Apartments, houses near the sea are an excellent investment. They can be offered for a long-time and short-time rental. When doing it, many local real estate owners control the rental process themselves, while foreigners more frequently hire property management companies. Let’s try and figure out what is more profitable – to run rental yourself or to hire a professional and to sign an agreement with a company which will manage the renting and maintenance process. 

Property rental and maintenance management 

It is well known that sometimes people buy housing in another country or a city but fail visiting and maintaining it. As a result the flat gets desolated, loses its view, quality. Instead of bringing income, it causes permanent additional costs.

To avoid this situation, living complexes offer property management services.

The proposed package includes economic, legal and engineering services.

The company does everything to get income from real estate, prepares necessary documents, takes care of maintenance and conditions of the living premises.

Property management in Bulgaria is based on two contracts:

• Living complexes general parts maintenance agreement. It includes security, cleaning territories, gardening, swimming pool servicing, repair and maintenance of playgrounds, sport grounds, an elevator.
• Private real estate support contract. Based on this agreement managers run long-term and short-term rental of the apartment. The managers control all the issues. 

Advantages

The purpose of the property management agreement is to professionally run real estate rental business. It might be interesting for following owners:
Investors. This group includes people who bought real estate for further renting it. They own one or several objects.

Apartment owners living in other cities, countries. They do not have a possibility to search for tenants, control check-in and check-out dates, payment, cleaning.

People who are afraid of allowing others to live in their flats, houses. They believe that dishonest tenants may worsen the apartment state, break or damage furniture, housing appliances, flood neighbors or leave huge power and water bills. 

The property management agreement solves all this issues making the firm responsible for:

• Searching tenants, charging them.
• Preparing a check-in and check-out schedule.
• Cleaning, cosmetic renovation.
• Control over the renting processes.

Searching tenants for studio, one-, two-bedroom apartments is the management companies’ main business. They professionally implement their responsibilities and guarantee that the flats’ owners will get a confirmed income. 

The income is calculated based on an agreed schedule. The owner gets an interest of the total sum received from rental. It depends on the period during which the company can run property. The highest interest is received when the flat is available for rental year-round. In this case the owner can live in it only during 2 weeks a year outside the season.

Based on the business results, managers make a report which includes rental period, income received and an amount due to the investor.

This scheme is convenient as the owner does not need to take care about a support fee. The income they receive is after the fee. The commission is usually 15-30 %.

Disadvantages

Apartments’ owners often reject the property management contract. They stop trusting management companies because of fraud cases and improper behavior. 

These are some situations owners may face:

• Absence of reports, so it is impossible to control actual income received.
• Non-fulfillment of agreed responsibilities. The owner comes for a vacation in the agreed time and is surprised to see that the flat is occupied; it is dirty; there are no housing appliances.
• Managers plan to make changes in the agreement without investor’s agreement, insist on modifying payment terms. If the owner disagrees, they break the contract but keep on renting the apartment.

These situations are not frequent. To avoid unpleasant incidents, we recommend find out more about the subject management company prior to signing the contract. Learn how it behaves in different situations and whether there is no risk of cancelling contractual liabilities.

Apart Estate agency will make sure your apartment in Bulgaria is rented as much as possible. We will provide complete reports, transfer the full amount to be paid to you.

We take care of our reputation and do anything possible to make sure our work is transparent. Your property in Bulgaria must work for you and we will help you!