The warranty is
for the building, not for you.
The periods reach 10 years and are set in an ordinance, but the rights under them do not pass to the buyer automatically.
The warranty is for the building, not for you One delegating article and one ordinance
The Spatial Development Act (ЗУТ) does not list warranty periods. It delegates. Under Article 160(3), the Minister of Regional Development sets the minimum periods by ordinance; under paragraph 4, the specific periods are agreed in the contract between the client and the contractor and cannot be shorter than the minimum ones; and under paragraph 5, they run from the day of commissioning.
Three things follow from this at once, and each of them is a risk. First, the warranty is contractual in origin: only its lower limit is set by regulation. Second, the contract that creates it is between the client and the builder, and the buyer of an apartment is, as a rule, neither of them. Third, the count starts from commissioning, not from the notarial deed (нотариален акт), not from the handover of the keys and not from payment.
The ordinance is Ordinance No 2 of 2003 on the commissioning of construction works and minimum warranty periods (Наредба № 2). It has been amended six times, and the amendment of 12 November 2019 rewrote the table of periods entirely. Any text that gives older numbers today was copied from before that date. Such texts are still online in 2026.
From here on, everything in this article is the same question asked five times: the rights exist, but who holds them and against whom are they directed. What the acts themselves mean on the way to a finished building is covered in Act 14, 15 and 16.
Four periods for one building
and twelve more that are not for housing
The table in Article 20(4) of Ordinance No 2 has sixteen items. For an ordinary residential building, four of them apply.
Ten years for all types of newly built structures, including the ground base beneath them. Seven years for waterproofing, thermal insulation, sound insulation and anti-corrosion works in a non-aggressive environment, and five years for the same in an aggressive one. Seven years for the internal installations of the building. Five years for all other construction, installation and finishing works: floor and wall coverings, tinsmith work, ironwork, carpentry and the like.
The other twelve items cover roads, bridges, railway lines, runways and networks. We mention them so that it is clear the four above were chosen, not that the ordinance was read only halfway.
There is also one exception, added in 2019, that quietly removes an entire category. The minimum periods do not apply to technological equipment that is the subject of a commercial transaction and comes with a warranty card. So the air conditioner, the heat pump, the boiler and the lift leave the seven-year regime for installations and fall under the manufacturer’s warranty, which is measured in years, not decades. The installation work stays with the builder for the period of the building. The product does not.
The decisive date is in a document you do not have § 9 and 12 November 2019
The 2019 amendment raised two of the four periods: insulation from 5 to 7 years, internal installations from 5 to 7. And it came with a one-sentence transitional provision: the ordinance applies to contracts between the client and the contractor concluded after its entry into force, that is, after 12 November 2019.
Read that again. The decisive date is not the date of Act 16 (Акт 16). It is not the date of the notarial deed. It is not the date you moved in. The decisive date is the date of the construction contract between the developer and the builder, a document the buyer has never seen and has no reason to ask for.
A building whose construction and installation contract was signed in 2018, with Act 16 issued in 2022, carries the old periods: waterproofing 5 years instead of 7, internal installations 5 instead of 7. That building is sold today as “new construction” and looks no different from the one next door.
The difference between 5 and 7 years is exactly the difference between “I have a right” and “I have no right” for a leak that appears in the sixth year. It is not decided by what the listing says, nor by the year on the façade. It is decided by one date in someone else’s file.
When it starts and where exactly it is written
The information is not missing. Nobody looks for it.
The period runs from the date of the use permit (разрешение за ползване), issued for higher-category construction by the Directorate for National Construction Control (ДНСК), or from the date of the certificate of commissioning (удостоверение за въвеждане в експлоатация), issued for medium and low-rise construction by the municipality. Both documents are public and are published in the unified public register for spatial development.
What is little known is that the periods themselves are written into the document itself. Ordinance No 2 requires both the use permit and the certificate of commissioning to state the minimum warranty periods. So the paper that says when the count begins also says how far it runs.
The risk here is not that the information is missing. The risk is that nobody looks for it. The commissioning date is not written into the notarial deed. A resale buyer sees the previous owner’s deed, sees a cadastral sketch and a tax assessment, and has no reason at all to ask for the use permit, even though that is exactly the document that carries both the start date and the periods. What is checked before a deal, and why the list is longer than expected, is in How to check a property before buying.
And one more sentence from the ordinance that shapes the whole conversation from here on: when hidden defects appear within the warranty periods and no agreement is reached, disputes are resolved in court. There is no administrative body that can oblige the builder to make repairs. There is no Directorate for National Construction Control for the leak in the bedroom. There is a court.
The second buyer and a decision from 1984 The warranty does not follow the property
This is the most expensive misunderstanding in the topic. The warranty period arises from a contract between the client and the builder, and under Article 21 of the Obligations and Contracts Act (ЗЗД) a contract has effect between the parties, and towards third parties only in the cases provided for by law. The buyer of an apartment is a third party.
Interpretative Decision No 37 of 13 November 1984 of the General Assembly of the Civil Chambers of the Supreme Court (ОСГК на Върховния съд) holds that warranty liability does not follow the property when it is transferred. Only rights in rem follow the property. The other rights connected with it must be expressly assigned under Article 99 of the Obligations and Contracts Act for the new owner to be able to rely on them. Courts still apply this decision today. There is also an opposite line in case law, according to which the liability is towards the building itself and towards every current owner of a unit in it, but legal doctrine leans rather towards the first.
That leaves Article 163(3) of the Spatial Development Act, under which the builder bears financial liability for damage caused by its own culpable acts or omissions. Binding case law of the Supreme Court of Cassation (ВКС) holds that this claim is also available to the end buyer. But the difference between the two claims is decisive: warranty liability does not require fault, while the claim under Article 163(3) requires proven fault.
So the second buyer, as a rule, does not inherit the easier claim, only the harder one. And the seller who had the easier one has in practice lost it, because they are no longer the owner and have suffered no damage. Preventing this costs one paragraph in the contract and one letter to the builder. Zero euros, if someone thought of it in time. Where exactly such a clause is written is a question for The preliminary contract and for the notarial deed.
The seller: one year, not ten
The most underestimated number in the topic
The buyer usually has an undisputed right against one single person: the seller. And that is exactly the regime with the shortest period.
Under Articles 193 to 197 of the Obligations and Contracts Act, the seller is liable for defects in the property sold, including when they did not know about them, and an agreement releasing them from this liability is void. The period, however, is one year from handover for real property, and three years only if it is proven that the seller knowingly concealed the defect. Knowing concealment is a claim that has to be proven, not merely stated.
Separately there is Article 265 of the Obligations and Contracts Act on defects in contracted work: the rights lapse in six months, and for construction works in five years. This regime applies between the parties to the contract for work.
Put them together and you get four different periods for the same stain on the ceiling: one year against the seller, five years under Article 265 of the Obligations and Contracts Act, five to ten years under the ordinance against the builder, and a general five-year limitation period for the damages claim. That is why the question “what is the warranty” has not one answer but four, each of which leads to a different defendant.
A buyer who waits for the defect to “fully show itself” before reacting misses the shortest and most certain of the four, without ever realising it.
The builder that no longer exists Not bankruptcy. Quiet deregistration.
The most common bad scenario is not bankruptcy during construction. That is a separate risk, covered in Buying off-plan. The most common is quiet deregistration: the company that built the building completes liquidation and disappears from the Commercial Register (Търговски регистър) two or three years after Act 16. The party liable under the Spatial Development Act no longer exists as a legal entity.
What remains then. A claim against the developer as seller, where the one-year period has usually already expired. A claim against the developer as client under Article 49 of the Obligations and Contracts Act, who is jointly liable for the work assigned, but which requires proven fault of the builder and a developer that still exists. Additional liquidation under Article 273(2) of the Commerce Act (ТЗ), which only makes sense if assets remain, because the company does not regain its legal personality; newly discovered assets are simply sold off. A claim against the construction supervisor, who assessed the building as fit and often still exists. A claim against the designer, if the root of the defect is in the design.
The difference from bankruptcy is that here there are no proceedings, no trustee and no estate. There is only a missing defendant.
An example of the order of magnitude: replacing old waterproofing on a flat roof, based on market quotes from 2026, costs about €30 per square metre, that is, about €12,000 for a 400 sq m roof, or about €500 per apartment with twenty-four owners. The state fee on a claim is 4% of the amount claimed. Plus expert evidence, plus a lawyer, plus one to three years. And one more trap: the roof is a common part, so the claim is not brought by one owner at their own discretion but through the bodies of the condominium, discussed in Condominium ownership.
The insurance covers the building, not the apartment
and only while the policy is in force
The Spatial Development Act requires the builder, the designer, the consultant and the supervisor to insure their professional liability for damage caused to other participants and to third parties. It sounds like a safety net. Three caveats eat it away.
First, the sum is for the whole building, not per apartment. The minimum insured sum for a builder on a category IV construction project is BGN 100,000, that is, about €51,129 at the fixed rate, our conversion. Divided among forty apartments, that is about €1,278 per owner. A structural defect uses that up in a single day.
Second, the policy covers claims made during the term of the insurance contract, and the sums are set for a period of one year. So a leak discovered in the fifth year is not covered by the policy that was in force during construction. The mismatch between a warranty period of 7 or 10 years and insurance cover that is renewed every year is structural, not an exception.
Third, when the business ceases, the person is obliged to take out additional insurance for five years ahead. Five, not ten. And only if they actually do it.
So the question is not whether the building has a warranty. The building almost always has one. The question is who holds the rights, from what date the period runs, against whom the claim is directed and whether that party still has assets. These four answers cannot be read from the listing and cannot be read from the notarial deed. They are pieced together from documents that have to be requested while the buyer still has leverage, that is, before the deposit, not after Act 16.
Frequently asked questions
How many years is the warranty on new construction?
It depends on which part of the building is defective. Under the minimum periods in Ordinance No 2, the structure and the ground base beneath it have ten years, waterproofing, thermal insulation and sound insulation in a non-aggressive environment have seven, internal installations also have seven, and all other construction, installation and finishing works have five. These periods are minimums: the contract between the client and the builder can extend them but cannot shorten them. The count starts from the day the building is commissioned, not from the notarial deed and not from the handover of the keys.
Does the warranty pass to the next buyer of the apartment?
Not automatically. Under Interpretative Decision No 37 of 1984 of the General Assembly of the Civil Chambers of the Supreme Court, warranty liability does not follow the property: only rights in rem follow the property, and the other rights must be expressly assigned under Article 99 of the Obligations and Contracts Act. There is also an opposite line in case law, according to which the liability is towards the building itself and towards every current owner, but it is not the prevailing one. The second buyer is left with the claim under Article 163(3) of the Spatial Development Act, which is available to the end buyer but requires proven fault of the builder, unlike warranty liability, where no fault is required. That is why expressly assigning the rights in the contract on resale costs zero euros before the deal and a great deal after it.
From when exactly does the warranty period run, and where can it be seen?
It runs from the date of the use permit or of the certificate of commissioning, depending on the category of the construction. Both documents state the minimum warranty periods themselves, so the paper that gives the start also gives the end. Both documents are public and are published in the unified public register for spatial development. The problem is not that the information is missing, but that this date is not written into the notarial deed and a resale buyer has no reason to ask for the document where it appears.
If the builder no longer exists, against whom is the defect claimed?
If the company has been deleted from the Commercial Register, the party liable under the Spatial Development Act no longer exists as a legal entity and cannot be a defendant. Several harder routes remain: a claim against the developer as seller, where the one-year period under Article 197 of the Obligations and Contracts Act has usually already expired; a claim against the developer as client under Article 49 of the Obligations and Contracts Act, which requires proven fault of the builder; additional liquidation under Article 273(2) of the Commerce Act, which only makes sense if assets remain; and claims against the construction supervisor or the designer, who often still exist. Unlike bankruptcy, here there are no proceedings, no trustee and no estate, only a missing defendant.
Buying new
construction?
Tonight, ask for one single date: when the construction contract between the developer and the builder was signed. Not the date of Act 16, not the date of the building permit. If the seller cannot tell you, that is already an answer, because exactly this date decides which periods apply to the building.
Send it to us together with the commissioning date and the listing. We come back with an assessment of which period expires when, against whom each of the four regimes is directed, which of them has already expired, and what the contract needs to say so that you do not buy a building with a warranty whose rights have stayed with someone else.
The assessment is commercial and practical, not a legal opinion, and does not replace a lawyer. Amounts in BGN are converted at the fixed rate of 1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN.
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