The year went
in two directions.
Deals are falling, prices are rising, credit is record cheap and ever harder to get. A single number on its own answers nothing.
The year went in two directions and one number answers nothing
If anyone tries to describe 2026 in one sentence, they will get it wrong, whichever sentence they choose. Deals are declining. Prices are climbing. Credit is the cheapest in the modern history of the market and at the same time ever harder to get. In construction, more permits are issued than builds are started.
These signals do not cancel each other out and are not averaged. That is why the review below has no single number for the year, but a series of numbers, each with a period, source and denominator.
And one honest point right at the start, because it determines what you can expect from here on. An annual review published at the end of December has, by definition, no annual numbers. The number of deals for the last quarter comes out in January. The house price index for the last quarter comes out in March. The data on homes completed (въведени в експлоатация) for the whole year only comes out in May. So this is a review of the year up to the last published quarter, plus what is already known about its end. We will not disguise that with averages, and we will not forecast 2027.
Deals
and why one number went around the internet in the wrong form
The only primary source for the number of deals is the Registry Agency (Агенция по вписванията). Everything else is a reprint, and it is precisely in the reprints that the context gets lost.
The first quarter of 2026 in Varna: 2,433 registered sales, a fall of 21.5% year on year. The second quarter: 3,077 deals, a fall of 16.7% year on year. For the whole country, the second quarter gives 45,965 deals, a fall of 17.9%.
This is the place for the correction that is worth more than the numbers themselves. In the spring, “Varna down 43%” spread, and the figure can still be found. It is correct, but it is quarter on quarter, not year on year: it compares the first quarter of 2026 with the last quarter of 2025, and the last quarter of every year is the seasonal peak. Year on year, the same data gives 21.5%. One number is three times scarier than the other, and both come from the same source. The original article is deals fell, now with the base clarified.
Three things only become visible when the two quarters stand side by side. The decline is easing, not deepening: from 21.5% to 16.7%. The second quarter has about 26% more deals than the first in absolute numbers, but part of that is seasonality and should not be read as a turnaround. And Varna is not the weakest market: in the second quarter Burgas falls more, by 23.7%, Sofia by 16.7%, and Plovdiv by only 6.7%.
What is missing at the time of writing: the data for the third quarter, which the Registry Agency publishes around 5 October 2026, and the data for the fourth, which only comes out around 5 January 2027. The year will not have a full number for deals before January, and no sum of three quarters plus an estimate will replace it.
Prices why they did not fall, even though deals did
Volume and price do not move together, and 2026 showed this within a single quarter.
The house price index of the National Statistical Institute (НСИ) for the first quarter of 2026 gives growth for the country of 14.8% year on year and 6.2% on the previous quarter, and for the city of Varna 13.2% and 4.0%. For context, the same index for the third quarter of 2025 was 15.4% year on year and 3.8% quarter on quarter, and for Varna specifically 5.2% quarter on quarter.
The usual counterargument is that homes are overvalued. The number quoted on this point is 13.8% overvaluation according to a model of the Bulgarian National Bank (БНБ), and it exists. But it refers to the third quarter of 2025, not to 2026. It was published in an analysis in 2026 and from there it travels into conversations without its period. A number without a period is not a fact, it is a mood.
And a second distinction: the index measures transaction prices, that is, the prices actually paid, while listings on the portals show asking prices. The two do not match and are not compared with each other. The two camps of forecasts are described in will prices fall, and the gap between prices and incomes in how affordable a first home is.
What is missing: the index for the third quarter of 2026, including the separate figure for Varna, comes out around 23 December 2026. This is the most recent official price figure this article can carry, and it arrives just days before the article is published. The index for the fourth quarter only comes out at the end of March 2027.
Credit
record cheap and ever harder to get
This is the most misleading part of the year, because the two halves of the sentence look incompatible, and they are not.
The cheap end. The volume of housing loans passed €19 billion by the end of July 2026. The average interest rate on a new housing loan is 2.41%, with an annual percentage rate (годишен процент на разходите) of 2.75% (June 2026). According to the data for the eurozone ranking (2.45% against an average of 3.43%), this is the second lowest interest rate; only Malta is lower, at 2.08%.
The hard end. The annual growth rate of housing loans has slowed for five consecutive readings: from about 28% in January, through 27.1% in April, 26.6% in May and 26.4% in June, to 25.7% in July 2026. Volume is growing, speed is falling. And this is not the effect of new regulation: the BNB caps were not touched in 2026 and remain an 85% loan-to-collateral ratio, 50% payments to income and a maximum term of 30 years, in force since 1 October 2024. In detail in the BNB tightened lending.
The slowdown comes from the banks themselves. The BNB survey of lending activity shows that in the second quarter of 2026 banks slightly tightened their standards on housing loans because of a higher assessment of risk, and they do not expect demand to keep growing in the following quarter.
On top of this sits the interest rate cycle. On 11 June 2026 the ECB raised its three key interest rates by 0.25 percentage points, the first increase in almost three years, and on 23 July 2026 it held them. Why the Bulgarian mortgage became cheaper all the same is covered in the ECB raised interest rates.
The first year fully in euro proven versus retold
2026 is the first calendar year in which the country operates fully in euro. This is a theme of the review, not a backdrop, and that is exactly why it deserves a careful separation of what is proven from what is repeated.
What is proven is inflation, and it has concrete numbers with a period. Annual inflation of 4.5% in July 2026, monthly 0.8%, 3.7% since the start of the year compared with December 2025, and average annual 5.1% for the period August 2025 to July 2026. For comparison, annual inflation in June was 5.2%, so there is a slight cooling over the summer.
What is repeated is something else: that the euro has pushed up property prices and that the euro has brought in foreign buyers. Neither of the two has a number with a methodology behind it. A coincidence in time is not a cause. There is also an opposite signal that is rarely quoted: total foreign investment is growing, but the net flow specifically into real estate in 2025 is negative. Who actually buys here and how the profile has changed is in foreign buyers after the euro.
That is why the review attributes neither the rise in prices nor the activity of the market to the euro. It removed currency risk and made transfers from the eurozone easier. The rest will be proven, or not, when data with a methodology comes out. What the seasonal peak of the year looked like is described separately in the record summer of 2026.
New construction
permitted does not mean started
Here one quarter carries the whole story, because in it the two numbers stand side by side.
For Varna region in the second quarter of 2026, permits were issued for 202 residential buildings with 1,316 homes and 150,880 sq m of gross floor area (разгъната застроена площ). Actually started in the same quarter: 150 buildings with 791 homes. So around 60% of the permitted homes are actually started. A permit is an intention, a started build is a decision, and the difference between the two is the decision the investor has already taken under real conditions.
A second number in the same direction: started residential buildings are about 15% fewer than in the same quarter of 2025. Varna remains fourth in the country for permits issued.
For scale, though with a different period: in 2025, 5,930 residential buildings with 37,571 homes were completed across the whole country, against 5,201 buildings with 20,998 homes in 2024. The number of homes almost doubles while the number of buildings grows by about 14%, so the average new building is noticeably larger.
What this means for the coming years is mechanics, not a forecast: buildings started in 2025 and 2026 reach the market in 2027 and 2028. That supply will increase is a consequence of decisions already taken. What it will do to price is not known and is not predicted here.
Varna from the inside a 2.5-fold difference within one city
All the numbers so far are for the market as a whole. An owner, however, sells a specific home in a specific neighbourhood, and there the differences are larger than any national average.
On 4 September 2026 we took our own snapshot of the active listings for the city of Varna. The denominator, in full: 8,236 active listings in 64 neighbourhoods, spread across 399 cells of neighbourhood by property type. Of these 399 cells, only 138, or 35%, have 10 or more listings, so only they are dense enough to quote. By category: 6,352 apartments, 1,105 plots, 488 houses, 291 garages and parking spaces.
The spread for a one-bedroom apartment (двустаен), from cells with 10 or more listings only. At the lower end, Hristo Botev at €1,400 per sq m with 11 listings and Kaysieva Gradina at €1,556 per sq m with 253 listings. At the upper end, the Greek Quarter at €3,259 per sq m with 41 listings and the area around the Municipality at €3,467 per sq m with 14 listings. So about a 2.5-fold difference in price per square metre within one city, and both ends are measured, not estimated.
Two caveats without which the numbers above are useless. First, these are asking prices, that is, the prices asked, not the prices paid. Second, and more important: this is one snapshot from one day. One snapshot is not a trend and will not be presented as one. It says what the picture was at the beginning of September 2026, nothing more.
How the same neighbourhoods look when measured distances to real places are added to the price, rather than advertising descriptions, is in six Varna neighbourhoods compared. Rental yield, gross versus net, is in rents in Varna.
What has not come out yet
and why that is part of the answer
The usual annual review ends with a forecast. This one ends with a calendar, because a calendar is more useful.
The number of deals for the third quarter is published by the Registry Agency around 5 October 2026, and the one for the fourth around 5 January 2027. The house price index for the third quarter comes out around 23 December 2026, and for the fourth at the end of March 2027. Homes completed for the whole of 2026 only arrive in May 2027, and annual inflation in mid-January 2027.
There are also things that exist only as a stated intention, and so they appear here with the name and date of the statement, not as fact. In July 2026 it was stated on television that an update of property tax assessments (данъчни оценки) by up to 30% is being prepared for the 2027 budget, as the last one dates from 2009. This is not a submitted bill and not an adopted law. Even if the assessments go up, municipal councils can reduce the rates and compensate.
That is why this article contains no forecast for 2027. There are forecasts in both directions, from a serious fall to moderate growth, and each of them is a position, not a measurement. The debate is described fairly in will prices fall, without the review taking sides.
What remains practical from all this. A number without a period means nothing, and in 2026 exactly this happened with two of the most discussed indicators: the 43% fall was quarter on quarter, and the 13.8% overvaluation was from more than a year earlier. One number taken out of its period can turn around a decision worth tens of thousands of euros. And second: contradictory signals are not averaged. A market in which volume falls while price rises is not “somewhere in the middle”; it calls for a specific answer for a specific property, a specific neighbourhood and a specific date.
Frequently asked questions
Did property prices in Varna fall in 2026?
Not according to the official data. The house price index of the National Statistical Institute for the city of Varna for the first quarter of 2026 shows growth of 13.2% year on year and 4.0% on the previous quarter (14.8% and 6.2% for the country). What fell during the year was the number of deals, not the price, and the two do not move together. The index for the third quarter of 2026, including the separate figure for Varna, is published around 23 December 2026, and the one for the fourth quarter only comes out at the end of March 2027. It also matters which prices you look at: the index measures prices actually paid in transactions, while listings on the portals show asking prices, and the two do not match.
How much did property deals in Varna really fall?
According to the Registry Agency, 2,433 sales were registered in Varna in the first quarter of 2026, a fall of 21.5% year on year, and 3,077 deals in the second quarter, a fall of 16.7%. So the decline is easing, not deepening. The widely shared figure of a 43% fall is correct, but it is a comparison with the last quarter of 2025, which is the seasonal peak of the year, not a comparison with the previous year. For the country, the second quarter gives 45,965 deals, a fall of 17.9%, with Burgas falling more than Varna, by 23.7%.
Why is a mortgage record cheap but harder to get?
Because price and access are determined by different things. The average interest rate on a new housing loan is 2.41% as of June 2026, and according to the data for the eurozone ranking (2.45%) the country is second after Malta, while the volume of housing loans passed €19 billion by the end of July 2026. At the same time, the annual growth rate has slowed for five consecutive readings, from about 28% in January to 25.7% in July 2026. The BNB caps were not changed in 2026 and remain an 85% loan-to-collateral ratio, 50% payments to income and a maximum term of 30 years. The slowdown comes from the banks themselves, which slightly tightened their standards in the second quarter because of a higher assessment of risk.
What will happen to property prices in 2027?
This review does not forecast 2027, and that is a deliberate decision. Public forecasts exist in both directions, from a serious fall to moderate growth, and each of them is a position, not a measurement. Only the mechanics are known: buildings started in 2025 and 2026 reach the market in 2027 and 2028, so supply will increase, but what effect this will have on price is not known. The stated intention to update tax assessments by up to 30% in the 2027 budget is also only a statement, not a submitted bill, and even with higher assessments municipal councils can reduce the rates.
Buying or
selling now?
Take the number you are relying on and check one thing in it: which period it is from and what it is calculated against. Year on year or on the previous quarter, asking price or transaction price, the whole country or only the region. In 2026, exactly this check separated a fall of 21.5% from a fall of 43%.
Send us the neighbourhood and the type of home. We send back the median of the listings for it and the number of listings behind it, so you can see whether the number rests on enough cases, or on four listings and a feeling.
The numbers are as of the stated periods and from the stated sources. Market information, not a valuation of a specific property and not investment advice.
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