When property sells in Varna
and when it does not
Seven years of data from the Registry Agency (Агенция по вписванията) show that the weakest quarter is January to March and the strongest is October to December, in 7 out of 7 years.
One number, two different stories Why the April headline was accurate and misleading at the same time
In April 2026 the headlines all said the same thing: property sales in the big cities had fallen by between 38% and 43%. The figure for Varna was 43.3%, and it is accurate. The problem is what the headline does not say: compared with what.
The drop of 43.3% is against the previous quarter, that is, the last quarter of 2025. Against the same quarter of the previous year, the drop in Varna is 21.5%. Both figures come from the same Registry Agency report, sit side by side in the release of the Bulgarian News Agency (БТА) of 6 April 2026 and describe the same event. They simply measure different things.
The difference between them has a name, and it is seasonality. The Varna market falls between December and March every year, without exception in the seven years with full published data. On average this transition is about minus 30%. In other words, most of the 43.3% would have been there even in the best possible year, and nobody writes about it in the other years, because then the number does not make a headline.
This article does the opposite of the headline: first it measures the season, then it looks at what is left after it. And it says explicitly how far the data goes, because it does not go as far as people claim.
Where the numbers come from
A counter of deals, not an assessment of the market
Only one source works for seasonality, and it is the Registry Agency, the “Statistics” section of the Property Register (Имотен регистър). It holds quarterly reports in PDF from 2005 onwards, by territorial registry office, and the column used here is “Sales”. It is a counter of deals actually registered, that is, of notarial deeds (нотариални актове) that reached the register.
The other usual sources do not do this job. The price index of the National Statistical Institute (НСИ) measures price, not activity. Average prices and “time to sell” from the portals are listings and estimates, not deals, and come without a published methodology. Active listings are a snapshot of supply at one moment, not a flow of completed deals.
The figures here were extracted by machine from the reports and checked against three independently published sources: the Bulgarian News Agency release for the first quarter of 2026, chernomore.bg for Varna (2,433 sales and 1,117 contractual mortgages) and the National Real Estate Association (НСНИ) for Sofia in the last quarter of 2025. All three match point for point.
Two limitations are stated right away, because they cannot be taken out later. First, the Varna registry office (служба по вписванията Варна) is not the same as the city of Varna: under the Registry Agency classification it covers six municipalities (Varna, Aksakovo, Avren, Beloslav, Dolni Chiflik and Byala), which is why everywhere here it says “the Varna registry office”, not “the city of Varna”. Second, the “Sales” column counts all property sales, not only homes: land, garages, shops, undivided shares. For a seasonal analysis this does not matter, because the figure is compared only with itself. For the sentence “this many apartments were sold” it does matter, and you will not read such a sentence here.
Seven out of seven The weakest quarter is January to March
Here is what the counters show for the Varna registry office, by quarter:
For 2025: 3,099 in the first quarter, 3,695 in the second, 3,870 in the third and 4,291 in the fourth. The difference between the start and the end of the year is 1,192 deals in the same city.
The same shape repeats in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. The fourth quarter is the strongest in 7 out of 7 of these years. The first is the weakest in the same 7 out of 7. Zero exceptions. This is not noise in the data, it is a pattern.
The years 2020 and 2021 are deliberately left out of the analysis: the reports for them are partly unpublished on the Agency page, and the years themselves are distorted by the pandemic. Including them would have made the picture worse, not better.
To compare strong and weak years with each other, the average quarter of each year is set to 100. Varna then looks like this: Q1 at 78.7 · Q2 at 103.5 · Q3 at 102.5 · Q4 at 115.3. An average first quarter sees about 79% of the normal number of deals, an average fourth quarter about 115%, which means about 47% more deals in the strongest quarter than in the weakest. The first quarter accounts for about 19.7% of the year, the fourth for about 28.8%.
Spring is not the peak
The dividing line runs between the end of the year and its start
Folk wisdom says spring is the season for property. The numbers do not confirm it. The second quarter in Varna stands at 103.5, that is, three and a half points above the average for the year. The third stands at 102.5. A one-point difference between spring and summer is, statistically, the same thing.
The real dividing line is not between spring and summer. It runs between the end of the year and its start: 115.3 against 78.7, and everything in between is a plateau.
The same holds for the other three big cities. Sofia reaches 124.1 in the fourth quarter, Plovdiv 122.0, Burgas 111.9. The peak is Q4 in all four. The difference is only in the depth: Sofia moves 1.55 times between peak and trough, Plovdiv 1.51, Burgas 1.41, Varna 1.47.
This is also the place to say that the Western seasonal model does not carry over. In the US and the UK the peak falls in spring and summer and is driven by the school year. If it applied here, the peak would be in Q2 and Q3, and Q4 would be weak. What is observed is the opposite. Why this is so is not claimed in this article: there are many plausible explanations, and not one has been checked against data.
Varna is not Nesebar, and it is not Sofia Two different markets and a missing summer dip
If you put Varna and Nesebar on one chart without separating them, you get a curve that peaks “somewhere between summer and winter” and says nothing. Separated, they say two different things.
The resort market peaks in the third quarter, in 7 out of 7 years. Nesebar is the clearest case: Q1 at 60.6 against Q3 at 129.9, that is, 2.15 times between the strong and the weak season. Tsarevo moves 1.93 times, Balchik 1.56. Varna moves 1.47. The mechanism needs no source: a resort property is bought by someone who is on the spot at that moment and looking at it. The holiday is the viewing.
And in summer Varna does not drop. The third-quarter index is 102.5 for Varna and 107.3 for Burgas, while Sofia drops to 89.5 and Plovdiv to 95.5. The two inland cities have a summer dip, the two coastal ones do not. The precise wording is not “summer is strong in Varna” but “in Varna summer does not drop, and in Sofia it does”.
One limitation here too: Golden Sands and Sveti Konstantin fall within the Varna registry office, so the resort part of Varna itself cannot be separated from the city part with this source. Nesebar and Tsarevo are purely resort offices, Varna is mixed.
2026: the season, a spent peak and cooling
Three different things in one number
Now the drop this article started with can be read. The first quarter of 2026 in Varna: 2,433 sales, minus 43.3% against the previous quarter and minus 21.5% year on year.
The first part of the drop is the season. The same transition in the previous five years: minus 39.2% (2017 to 2018), minus 33.2%, minus 36.4%, minus 17.9% and minus 25.7%. On average about minus 30%. The drop of 43.3% is deeper than usual, but it is not a new phenomenon.
The second part is the base. The fourth quarter of 2025 was not a normal fourth quarter: it was the last one before the adoption of the euro on 1 January 2026. Sofia recorded 12,156 deals, its strongest fourth quarter in seventeen years, and in the six largest cities the last quarter of 2025 was 16.4% above the same quarter of 2024 (National Real Estate Association). Varna recorded 4,291, its highest since 2022. A peak that will not repeat produces a depth that will not repeat either.
The third part is real cooling, and only that part is news. The second quarter of 2026 confirms it: Varna recorded 3,077 sales, that is, plus 26.5% on the first quarter, against an average seasonal rise of about plus 32%. The recovery is weak for the season, not strong. Year on year, the first half of 2026 is minus 18.9% for Varna, minus 21.3% for Burgas, minus 14.7% for Sofia and minus 4.7% for Plovdiv.
And one detail that explains why a record summer for tourism and a weak year for holiday homes exist at the same time: the resort market is falling harder than the city market. Nesebar is at minus 28.6% for the half year against minus 18.9% for Varna. Balchik minus 25.3%, Tsarevo minus 20.8%.
If you have read the April figures on the 40% drop or the clash of price forecasts, this is the context they were missing.
What the data does NOT show Four questions this source does not answer
This section matters more than the previous ones, because this is exactly where the claims are born that sound good and cannot be defended.
The months. The Registry Agency publishes only quarterly reports. There is no monthly registration data. So “December is the strongest month” cannot be proven from this source, and neither can “August is a dead month”. The only claim that can be made is that October to December is the strongest quarter, and July to September stands above the average for the year. Any monthly claim is extrapolation.
Prices. What is measured here is the seasonality of the number of deals. Whether the price per square metre has a seasonal pattern has not been checked and is not claimed. “You buy cheaper in January” does not follow from anything in this article.
Discounts and time on the market. There is no published source for either of the two, broken down by season. The average of 33 days to a deal in Varna quoted in other articles comes from the Zimoti portal, for the first quarter, with no published methodology. The same applies to the share of sellers who gave a discount: annual, not dated by season.
The cause. Why the fourth quarter is the peak is not known. The end of the year, bonuses, new tax assessments from 1 January, a wave of Act 16 (Акт 16) certificates, the wish to close before New Year: all of this is plausible and not one of them has been checked against data. That is why there is no sentence in this article that begins with “because”. The same goes for the question of why Kavarna behaves like a city and not like a resort, even though it is on the sea.
What follows from this
A risk, not a recipe
Seasonality is not a signal to buy or sell, and this article does not give one. It is context for reading numbers, and it has three practical consequences.
The first is about reading the news. Every number about the property market has a base, and the base decides what the number means. A drop against the previous quarter and a drop year on year are two different indicators. When the headline does not say compared with what, the number is not information.
The second is about when to go on the market. The data counts the day of registration, that is, the day of the notarial transaction, and between putting the property on the market and that day there are the listing, viewings, negotiation, a preliminary contract (предварителен договор), the bank and the notary. From this follows a conclusion, not a measured value: a property listed in December or January spends its first weeks on the market in the weakest quarter of the year. It does not sell for less because of that. It accumulates days on the market, and a property that sits unsold is a separate problem with its own price. For a resort property the same applies more strictly and on a different calendar: its buyer is physically on the spot in July and August.
The third is about the buyer’s position. In the first quarter there are the fewest buyers on the market, every year without exception, on average 79% of the normal level. Competition at each viewing is objectively at its lowest then. What does not follow from this: that discounts are bigger. There is no published data on discounts from the asking price by season, and anyone who claims otherwise is claiming it on instinct.
And one boundary at the end, so that values are not mixed: the figures here are for the Varna registry office and for all types of property. They are not combined in one sentence with the neighbourhood medians, because the comparison between neighbourhoods measures the price of active listings, while this article measures the number of completed deals.
Frequently asked questions
Which is the strongest season on the property market in Varna?
The fourth quarter, that is, October to December. According to Registry Agency data for the Varna registry office, the fourth quarter is the strongest in 7 out of 7 years with full published data: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. In a seasonal index where the average quarter equals 100, it stands at 115.3. The weakest quarter is the first, January to March, which stands at 78.7 and is the weakest in the same 7 out of 7 years. The difference between the two is about 47% more deals in the strongest quarter than in the weakest. For 2025 that is 3,099 sales in the first quarter against 4,291 in the fourth, a difference of 1,192 deals.
Is it true that spring is the strongest season for property?
For Varna the data does not confirm it. The second quarter stands at 103.5 in the seasonal index, only three and a half points above the average for the year, and the third stands at 102.5. A one-point difference between spring and summer is, statistically, the same thing. The real difference is between the end of the year and its start, not between spring and summer. The spring and summer peak is a model from the US and the UK, driven by the school year, and what is observed here is the opposite: the peak is in the fourth quarter in all four largest cities.
Why is it claimed that deals in Varna fell by 43% in 2026?
Because the figure is correct, but it is a drop against the previous quarter, not year on year. In the first quarter of 2026, 2,433 sales were registered at the Varna registry office, which is 43.3% below the fourth quarter of 2025 and 21.5% below the first quarter of 2025. The two comparisons sit side by side in the same report. The seasonal drop from the fourth to the first quarter is a normal occurrence and averaged about 30% over the previous five years. Separately, the fourth quarter of 2025 was unusually strong because it came just before the adoption of the euro on 1 January 2026. So 43.3% contains three different things: the usual season, a spent one-off peak and real cooling.
Which is the strongest month for selling property in Varna?
This question has no answer in the available data. The Registry Agency publishes its statistics by quarter, not by month, and there is no monthly breakdown of registrations. So claims like “December is the strongest month” or “August is a dead month” are extrapolation and are not based on a published source. The only claim that can be made is that October to December is the strongest quarter, and that July to September in Varna stands above the average for the year, unlike Sofia, where summer is below average. The same limitation applies to prices: what is measured here is the number of deals, not the price, and price seasonality has not been checked.
Check one date
before you read the numbers
Open the listing of your property and see from which date it has been active. Then place that date on the year: the first quarter accounts for about 19.7% of deals, the fourth for about 28.8%. A listing that went live in December spends its first weeks in the weakest quarter of the year and builds up days on the market without anyone there to look at it.
Send us the neighbourhood, the type of property and the date the listing went live. We tell you which seasonal window the property falls into, how much of its time on the market so far falls in the weak season, and when the next busier window is according to the same data. No promise on price: this is an assessment of timing, not a valuation of the property.
The figures are for the Varna registry office and cover all types of property, not only homes. This material is for information only and is not a recommendation to buy, sell or invest.
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