Signing takes
one hour.
The proxy settles the day of the deal and nothing before it. The ID number, the account and the legalised documents take weeks.
Signing takes an hour the rest takes weeks
A buyer who lives abroad always asks the same thing: “can I buy without coming?” The legal answer is “yes”, and it is boring. The interesting question is a different one.
The deal is signed by a proxy (пълномощник) in an hour. Everything else takes weeks and is a chain in which each link waits for the one before it. An ID number, a bank account, money that can come in and later go back out, translated and legalised documents. The power of attorney (пълномощно) settles the signing and nothing else.
This mismatch is exactly what produces failed remote deals. The person has prepared the document for the day, not for the four weeks before it. And because every link depends on the one before, a delay in one place cannot be made up in another.
This article is not a list of steps. It is a map of the chain and of the places where it breaks, because they are not where the buyer expects them. The power of attorney itself as a document, with its certifications and fees, is covered separately in the power of attorney in a deal, and what happens on the day itself at the notary, in the notarial deal.
EU citizen
today there is no difference at all
The first thing to get out of the way, because there is more outdated text about it on the internet than accurate text.
Both transitional periods under the Accession Treaty have expired: the one for the so-called second home, and the one for agricultural and forest land. After them Bulgaria introduced a new barrier in the Agricultural Land Ownership and Use Act (Закон за собствеността и ползването на земеделските земи): agricultural land could be acquired only by persons who had resided or been established in the country for more than five years.
The Court of Justice of the European Union struck it down. In a judgment of 18 January 2024 in case C-562/22, on a request for a preliminary ruling from a Bulgarian court, it held that the free movement of capital precludes rules that make the acquisition of agricultural land conditional on the acquirer having resided in that member state for more than five years.
The conclusion for 2026 is clear. A citizen of an EU or EEA country buys in Bulgaria on an equal footing with a Bulgarian: an apartment, a house with a garden, a plot, a field. No residence requirement, no need for a company, no difference in the documents.
One honest caveat. Whether the struck-down requirement has also been formally deleted from the text of the law, or is merely inapplicable under EU law, has not been confirmed. A rule that is inapplicable but still stands written is exactly the material that refusals at the counter are made of. That is why this article says what the Court of Justice of the EU decided, not what the law says today.
Land is the dividing line not citizenship
For a buyer from outside the EU the picture is different, but not where people expect. The Property Act (Закон за собствеността) divides not people but objects.
Buildings and limited rights in rem: freely, in their own name. Apartment, studio, office, shop. Citizenship is not a criterion. Land: not personally, except under an international treaty or by statutory inheritance.
So the problem is never the apartment. The problem is when land is attached to the property. A house with a garden. A parking space that is a marked spot on the plot, not a separate unit in a building, a distinction covered in parking space and garage. A plot, a villa, a field. And the most treacherous one: the undivided shares (идеални части) of the land plot, which the standard notarial deed (нотариален акт) for an apartment often transfers together with the home.
The two known ways out are real, and both have a price. A building right (право на строеж) instead of undivided shares, which is a limited right in rem and is permitted, but requires the seller’s consent and participation. Or a Bulgarian company as the owner, which carries its own accounting and an annual cost, so it is not a solution for a single apartment.
The risk this section describes is specific: the property the client has chosen and liked may be technically out of reach for them, and this only becomes visible when someone opens the seller’s deed and reads exactly what is being transferred. “We’ll ask on the day” is a month too late, the deposit (капаро) has already been paid, and the deadline under the preliminary contract (предварителен договор) is running against the buyer.
The three numbers
and none replaces the others
The popular belief here is wrong almost everywhere, including on Bulgarian property websites: that the buyer “gets a foreigner’s personal number (ЛНЧ) during the deal”.
Not so. The personal number of a foreigner is assigned by the Ministry of Interior (МВР) when a residence document is issued: long-stay, long-term or permanent. It is not a tax number, it is not issued by the revenue administration, and it is not obtained “for a deal”. A buyer who does not come and does not reside here does not have, and cannot have, such a number.
That is why the law has given them something else, and it is an obligation, not an option. The BULSTAT Register Act (Закон за регистър БУЛСТАТ) requires registration of foreign individuals without a Bulgarian personal number (ЕГН) and without a foreigner’s personal number who own real estate in the country. The deadline is seven days and runs not from the registration of the deed or from receiving it, but from the purchase of the property. The penalty for an individual is up to €511.29 (BGN 1,000 under Art. 45(1) of the BULSTAT Register Act, amended State Gazette (ДВ) No. 84/2023; the conversion is ours), and for a repeat offence from €2,556 to €5,113. The registration fee itself is symbolic, under €10.
And a third number, for tax purposes: for persons without a Bulgarian personal number and without a foreigner’s personal number, the revenue administration issues an official number (служебен номер).
The result is that a buyer from abroad collects up to three different identifiers for one apartment, and none of them replaces the other two. The order in which they are obtained depends on what the notary wants, what the bank wants and what the municipality wants. And they do not want the same thing.
The bank that refuses without a reason the second bottleneck
This is the hardest point in the chain, and it is not legal but practical.
There is no legal requirement for personal presence when opening a payment account. The requirement comes from each bank’s internal rules, based on its own risk assessment. Practice is not the same across banks and is not fully published. And most importantly: there is no statutory mechanism to appeal a refusal. The bank is not obliged to give reasons, and there is no procedure for challenging the refusal.
The difference between a buyer from the EU and a buyer from outside the EU runs exactly through here. The right to a payment account with basic features is given to a consumer legally resident in the European Union. A citizen of a third country without residence in the EU is outside its scope, so they have nothing to invoke.
The trap in the document package is small, and that is why it surprises people. Among the papers requested is a proof of address, and the typically accepted evidence is a lease agreement or a notarial deed. The buyer has neither yet, because they need the account before the deal. A proxy is possible at some banks, but the requirements for certifying the power of attorney itself vary widely.
Can it be done without a Bulgarian account at all? It can: payment can also be made from a foreign account to the seller’s account or to the notary’s special account (особена сметка). But the account is not for the deal, it is for after it: taxes, electricity, water, the waste collection fee, the building owners’ association. So the account is not a blocker for the signing but a blocker for the life of the property, and that is exactly why it gets postponed and hurts later.
Money: two different worlds
SEPA and everything else
Since 1 January 2026 Bulgaria has been in the eurozone, and this changed the way in, but only for half the world. Who actually buys here after the euro is the subject of foreign buyers after the euro.
A euro transfer from a bank in the SEPA area is cheap, fast and free of currency risk. A transfer from a third country is not SEPA. It goes through a correspondent bank, costs more and can be stopped by a party that is neither the sending nor the receiving bank. The buyer from Germany and the buyer from outside the EU are in two different worlds, and this is a concrete, not a theoretical, difference.
In addition, both the agency and the notary are obliged entities under the Measures Against Money Laundering Act (Закон за мерките срещу изпирането на пари). That is where the documents the client takes for a formality come from: a declaration of the origin of funds, a declaration on politically exposed persons, and for a legal entity also a declaration of the beneficial owner. Real estate transactions trigger customer due diligence regardless of value.
The point that is specific to a remote deal: this is a check on a person nobody has seen. Remote identification is possible, but it requires additional measures, and each of them is one more place where the process can stop without anyone having made a mistake.
And the least known point, which hits on the way back. For a cross-border transfer to a country outside the EU and the EEA of about €15,340 and above, the payer provides the bank with information and documents proving the grounds and the amount. This bites on a returned deposit, on a failed deal and on a later resale, that is, when the money heads back out. Then the document nobody kept is needed urgently. Which documents are worth having even before the deposit is covered in what buyers miss before paying a deposit.
Why a translation is a day, not an email three layers, three days
Every foreign document that has to take effect in Bulgaria passes through three layers, and each layer is a separate day.
First, legalisation or an apostille. When an apostille is not needed at all, because there is a bilateral treaty, is covered in the power of attorney in a deal , and it is a frequent source of wasted money. Second, a translation by a person on the list of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Third, and this is the layer that produces the day: notarial certification of the translator’s signature.
The Regulations on Legalisations (Правилник за легализациите) put it literally: the translator’s signature on the translation they made must be notarised in the Republic of Bulgaria. So it is not enough for the translation to be good. The translator has to physically go to a notary. For a rare language, this means a specific person, probably in another city, free on a specific date.
Two more that nobody anticipates. A translation from one foreign language into another is not done directly but through Bulgarian, and fees are charged for both translations. And the cheapest mistake: translations containing corrections, deletions, insertions or erasures are invalid. A single handwritten correction kills the document and sends the chain back to the start.
And here is why distance has a price, expressed as a number. Consular certification of a one-page power of attorney for a property costs €45, while the same certification at a notary in Bulgaria is about €10. The difference in itself is bearable. What is unbearable is that a new document means a new consular appointment, and consular appointments are not handed out by urgency.
Who sits at the table
and what starts after the deed
Two details on the day are specific to a remote deal and are worth knowing in advance.
The power of attorney must cover the money too, not just the signing. A power of attorney that gives the right to buy, but not to pay the price or receive a receipt, stops the day. The same happens if there is no right to delegate the power to someone else. The cost is not the fee for a new power of attorney but a postponed day with a bank, a seller, a notary and a deadline under the preliminary contract all tied up. And when the principal is abroad, a new power of attorney means a new consular appointment.
The translator in the room, and this works both ways. The Civil Procedure Code (Граждански процесуален кодекс) obliges the notary to appoint a translator when one of the participants does not know Bulgarian and the language they use is unknown to the notary. A breach is among the grounds for nullity of the notarial certification, and a null certification also makes the deal itself null for lack of form. This is not a formality but a ground for the property not having been bought.
The flip side is the unexpected argument for a remote deal: if a Bulgarian proxy who speaks Bulgarian appears at the table, no translator is needed at all. The remote deal removes a problem that an in-person deal with a foreign-language buyer creates.
And finally, the story turns around. Three of the four things after the deed have a deadline, and the buyer is no longer in the country. Registration in BULSTAT is seven days from the purchase. The declaration under the Local Taxes and Fees Act (Закон за местните данъци и такси) is two months. The utility accounts for electricity, water and the owners’ association have no deadline, but there is also nobody to open them.
So the buyer’s obligations begin exactly when their attention ends. That is the whole reason a remote deal is not an event but a process: the day of signing is the easiest part of it.
Frequently asked questions
Can a foreigner buy property in Bulgaria without coming to the country?
Yes. The deal is signed by a proxy, and the law does not require the buyer to be present. The problem is that the signing is the shortest link in the whole chain. Before it come the ID number, the bank account, the origin of funds and the legalised and translated documents, and each of these links waits for the previous one and has its own deadline. That is why the realistic horizon of a remote purchase is measured in weeks, not days, and is planned backwards, from the date of the notarial deed to today.
Can a citizen of a third country buy an apartment in Bulgaria?
An apartment, studio, office or shop, yes, in their own name, because the Property Act allows foreigners to acquire buildings and limited rights in rem. The restriction is on land: it can be acquired only under the terms of an international treaty or by statutory inheritance. So the place to be careful is not the home itself but what else is transferred with it, most often undivided shares of the land plot, and sometimes a parking space that is a marked spot on the plot rather than a unit in a building. The two ways out are a building right instead of undivided shares, or a Bulgarian company as the owner, and both have a price in time and in costs.
Do I need a foreigner’s personal number (LNCh) to buy property in Bulgaria?
No, and this is the most often repeated inaccuracy on the subject. The personal number of a foreigner is assigned by the Ministry of Interior when a residence document is issued, not by the revenue administration and not “during the deal”. A buyer who does not reside in the country does not have it and cannot have it. Instead, the law requires registration in the BULSTAT register for foreign persons who own real estate in the country, within seven days of purchasing the property. For tax purposes, the revenue administration issues a separate official number to persons without a Bulgarian personal number and without a foreigner’s personal number.
Will a Bulgarian bank refuse me an account if I do not live in the country?
It is possible, and it happens. There is no legal requirement for personal presence when opening a payment account; the requirement comes from each bank’s internal rules based on its risk assessment, and these are not the same and are not fully published. A citizen of an EU country is in a stronger position, because the right to a payment account with basic features is given to a consumer legally resident in the Union, while a citizen of a third country without such residence is outside the scope of that protection. The most unpleasant part is that the refusal cannot be appealed through any statutory procedure, so a second bank means a new document package, and often a new power of attorney with a new consular appointment.
Buying
without coming?
Open the seller’s notarial deed and look at one thing: what exactly is being transferred. If the description of the property includes undivided shares of the land plot and the buyer is not an EU citizen, this is a conversation to have before the deposit, not on the day of the deal.
Send us the seller’s deed and the buyer’s citizenship. We tell you whether the property is available in this form, where in the chain the process will stop, and which deadlines start running the day after signing.
A general explanation of the legislation as of 2026, not legal advice on a specific deal.
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