Land without power and water
is not a plot.
The listing says “plot”. The document says farmland, with no access or no plan. The difference is not a matter of style: the buyer pays for it, in money and in lost time.
“Plot” is a sales word.
It has no legal definition. It can sit above a photo of a field with a nice view and a dirt track, and that is not a breach. The legal words are three, and each is checked separately: designated use, plan, access. In our own search for a plot in Varna in August 2026, only five of eighteen listings met all four conditions at once that the buyer considered obvious. Not because the market lies, but because the listing describes the land in sales words, while the deal happens in legal ones.
The definition is in the law, and it is literal. Under § 5, item 11 of the Additional Provisions of the Spatial Development Act (ЗУТ), a regulated land plot (урегулиран поземлен имот, УПИ) is a property for which a detailed development plan (подробен устройствен план, ПУП) sets boundaries, access from a street, road or alley, a specific designated use and a development regime. The four are joined by “and”, not by “or”. If one of them is missing, there is no regulated plot, whatever the title of the listing says.
The other half of the question is whether you can build at all. The answer is in Article 12(2) of the Spatial Development Act: construction is allowed only if it is provided for in a detailed development plan that has entered into force, and after the designated use of the land has been changed, where a special law requires it. The two conditions are separate and are checked separately. Land whose designated use has been changed, but without a plan in force, is still not a place to build.
The first check is not on site but in the document: the sketch (скица), what the land is designated for, whether there is a plan in force and whether the regulation has been implemented. The viewing shows the slope and the view. It does not show any of the four conditions.
The cost of conversion and the clock attached to it.
“I will take it out of agricultural use” sounds like a formality, and it is not. The procedure is under the Agricultural Land Protection Act (Закон за опазване на земеделските земи, ЗОЗЗ), and the fee is not a fixed amount but a formula: Т = СББ х Кплощ х Кк х Кпол, under Article 5(1) of the Tariff to Council of Ministers Decree (ПМС) No. 112 of 2002, last amended in the State Gazette (ДВ), issue 60 of 25 July 2025. So the exact amount cannot be known before the specific property is known.
One of the multipliers, however, can be read straight from the table, and it is the reason Varna is expensive. The coefficient for the category of the settlement is 13.00 for the capital municipality, for settlements of the first to third category, for national resorts and for land bordering the coastal strip, against 6.00 for the cheapest group. Varna falls into the expensive group on two grounds at once. For an area of up to and including one decare (1,000 sq m), the area coefficient is 2.40, so these two multipliers alone give 31.20, before you even reach the soil quality score (бонитетен бал) of the specific land.
On top of this formula there are also fixed fees, paid regardless of it: €102 once for reviewing the application under the Agricultural Land Protection Act for sites of up to 50 decares, and €25 for issuing the act on the category of the land.
The decision to change the designated use loses legal effect in three cases under Article 64a(1) of the Regulations for the Implementation of the Agricultural Land Protection Act (ППЗОЗЗ): if the fee is not paid within three months of the notification, if no building permit is applied for within three years, or if construction has not started within six years.
That is why a decision shown from years ago may be a blank sheet. It looks like a completed procedure, but it is in fact a document that has already lost its effect and needs updating. The buyer rarely asks about the date.
No road, no building.
Access is part of the very definition of a regulated plot, not a convenience added to it. Article 14(4) of the Spatial Development Act says it without reservation: regulated land plots must have frontage onto a street, a road or, by exception, an alley in a park. This is a condition for the property to exist as regulated, not a recommendation about quality of life.
Two things follow from this that sound minor in conversation. A neighbour who lets you through their yard today is not secured access: a verbal arrangement is not registered and does not pass to the next owner of the neighbouring property. And a dirt track to the property is not a street under the regulation plan. The difference only shows when a concrete mixer or a lorry with a prefabricated house has to get through, that is, after the land has already been paid for.
The figures are frontage and area under Article 19(1) of the Spatial Development Act. On division, the parts actually separated cannot fall below the minimum reduced by one fifth (Article 19(4)). A buyer who takes one property intending to split it into two houses runs into exactly this table, not into their own plan.
And one more number that disappears quietly. When unregulated land is regulated, under Article 16(1) of the Spatial Development Act the owners transfer to the municipality a percentage of the area set by the plan, but no more than 25 per cent. You buy 1,000 sq m with the idea “I will get it regulated” and end up with a regulated plot of 750 sq m. The building parameters are then calculated on the new area, not on the area you bought.
“Runs nearby” is not a unit of measurement.
The prices for connecting to the electricity distribution grid are approved by the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission (КЕВР) and are public. The numbers look reassuringly precise right up until you read the condition next to them.
The condition is one sentence, and it decides everything: the power tariffs apply for a supply line of up to 25 metres. If the grid does not reach that far, the site is outside its coverage and facilities have to be built or extended. That is a separate bill, a separate project and a separate timeline, and none of the three fits into a tariff. That is exactly why “power runs nearby” in a listing is not information: “nearby” has no unit of measurement, and 25 metres does.
With water the logic is the same, with smaller numbers. Besides the connection, you pay €80.00 for reviewing the documents and issuing a schedule, and the service connection to the building is designed separately: €184.07 for an investment project for a water service connection of up to 50 metres. All of these are operator fees and design work, not the digging and the pipe on the ground.
In our search, eighteen listings made it into the report. Five met all of these at once: one decare, a regulated plot, power and water. About fifteen would have met the criteria if “power and water at the boundary of the property” counted as power and water. The whole difference is one word: the utilities are on the property with their own account, or only up to it. The buyer reads both as “it has power and water”.
A well or borehole without a utility account is not a connection to the water supply network. In our sample, three of the five best properties had exactly this: there is water, but no account.
The deadlines under Ordinance No. 6 of 28 March 2024 also need careful reading: an opinion on the connection conditions within 14 days of the request for a study, the opinion valid for one year, a draft preliminary contract within 15 days. For complex schemes the deadlines are extended by agreement, so the upper limit is not guaranteed.
One decare, two different answers.
How much house you get from one decare is decided not by the area but by the development zone. Under Article 19(1) of Ordinance No. 7 of 22 December 2003, in a low-rise residential zone the building density is 20 to 60 per cent, the floor area ratio 0.5 to 1.2 and the landscaping 40 to 60 per cent. Under Article 29(1) of the same ordinance, holiday home zones get a density of up to 40 per cent, a floor area ratio of up to 0.8 and a minimum of 50 per cent landscaped area, with a holiday building height of 7 metres.
Four hundred square metres of difference, from the same decare, because of one letter in the zone code. The built-up area diverges the same way: up to 600 sq m against up to 400 sq m.
Why this number does not appear in the listing
The effect is simple and expensive. Two buyers pay the same money for one decare in the same area and get a 400 sq m difference in building rights. One gets two extra floors, the other finds out about their ceiling at the design stage, when the land is theirs and the money has been paid.
The difference between a plot and an expense.
None of these things can be seen in the photo, and each of them moves the price by thousands of euros or makes construction impossible. The difference between a plot and an expense is not in the price per square metre. It is in which of the four conditions are missing and what it costs to obtain them, if they can be obtained at all.
That is why, before the viewing, we check the document: what the land is designated for, whether there is a plan in force, where the access comes from and how far power and water actually reach. Five of eighteen passed this check. The other thirteen were not bad properties. They simply were not what the listing said.
The connection prices are the published tariffs of Elektrorazpredelenie Sever (Електроразпределение Север) and of ViK Varna (ВиК Варна), including VAT, as at 21 August 2026, and they change with decisions of the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission. The building figures are the ceilings of Ordinance No. 7 of 2003, not the parameters of a specific property. The ratio of 5 to 18 comes from our own search on 17 August 2026 in the Kochmar and Salzitsa areas on imot.bg, alo.bg, olx.bg and home2u.bg, so it describes that sample, not the whole Varna market.
The three questions we hear most often.
What is the difference between a plot and a regulated plot?
+Plot is a sales word and has no legal definition. A regulated plot is a legal term: under § 5, item 11 of the Additional Provisions of the Spatial Development Act, it is a land property for which a detailed development plan sets boundaries, access from a street, road or alley, a specific designated use and a development regime. The four conditions are joined by and, not by or. If one of them is missing, there is no regulated plot, whatever the listing says.
Is it enough for power and water to run up to the property?
+No. Up to the property and on the property with its own utility account are two different deals. The connection prices of Elektrorazpredelenie Sever are €227.01 for capacity up to 6 kW and €355.86 for 7 to 15 kW, but for a supply line of up to 25 metres. If the grid does not reach that far, a facility has to be built or extended, and that is a separate bill and a separate timeline. A well or borehole without a utility account is not a connection to the water supply network.
How much floor area can you build on one decare?
+It depends on the development zone, not on the area. Under Ordinance No. 7 of 2003, in a low-rise residential zone the floor area ratio reaches 1.2, meaning up to 1,200 sq m of gross floor area from one decare. In a former holiday home zone the ceiling is 0.8, meaning up to 800 sq m, with 50 per cent mandatory landscaping. These are the ceilings of the ordinance, and the actual figures come from the detailed development plan in force and are almost always lower.
Looking at a plot to build on?
We check the designated use, the plan, the access and how ready power and water really are, before you have paid a deposit. From eighteen listings we filtered out the five that hold up. The filtering is the work, not the trip to the property.
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