You list at 115,900.
Your account receives 105,202.
There is no fraud between the two, just eight lines, each of them normal and legal on its own.
Between the asking price and the money in your account stand eight lines
A one-bedroom apartment in the Vinitsa neighbourhood. The median of active listings is €115,900, at about €1,654 per square metre, and behind that number stand 465 listings, the largest sample for a one-bedroom apartment in the whole city.
The seller counts on 115,900. On a perfectly normal day about €105,202 reaches his account, and if the property has a mortgage with a remaining debt of €38,000, the amount actually collected falls further. The difference is €10,698 on a price he set himself.
There is no fraud here and there are no hidden fees. There are eight lines, each of them normal, legal and predictable on its own, and that is exactly why nobody adds them up at once. Some are percentages, some are fixed amounts, and two of them are either zero or huge, and those are precisely the two that sellers ask about least often in advance.
This article goes through all eight. Not so that you can avoid them, but because their total is settled before the listing, not after the preliminary contract (предварителен договор).
We start with our own line, because it is the one people always ask about
First we clear the line that is us, so that it does not hang over the end as a surprise.
Our agent’s commission is 3 per cent from one side. At the agreed price of €108,946 in the main example, that is €3,268.
We put it here, at the start and with the number, for one simple reason. Keeping quiet about this line works against us, not for us: a seller who discovers the amount in the preliminary contract experiences it as a surprise, and it is the surprise that breaks trust, not the size. What exactly those three per cent cover is described in The agent’s commission.
And since we have started with numbers, here is the awkward comparison that will come up again further down. The commission is 3 points that people always ask about before signing the contract. The negotiation discount, covered in the next section, is 6 points in the same example and passes without comment, because it does not come with an invoice.
Both lines are paid by the same person, out of the same amount. Yet the argument is only ever about one of them.
The biggest line has no tariff and is not a levy
The negotiation discount is about 65 per cent of the whole difference between expectation and the final sum in the main example. It is not a fee, not a tax and not in anyone’s price list.
There are two published figures for the market, and they are not comparable, so they are quoted separately. According to a survey by Address Real Estate (Адрес Недвижими имоти) from July 2026, 54 per cent of sellers compromised on price over the last six months, by 2 to 10 per cent of the asking price. According to a separate survey by Imoteka dated 30 July 2026, about 40 per cent gave a discount of up to €10,000, usually between €5,000 and €10,000. Different methodologies, different measures, and neither of the two publishes its sample or period.
Far more important than the percentage is the qualification the author of the first figure gives alongside it: discounts of up to 10 per cent are made only on above-market and wrongly set prices, often by sellers still living in the euphoria of previous years.
In other words, the discount is not a market levy on every deal. It is the cost of a wrong starting price.
And it has a calendar. The chair of the management board of the National Real Estate Association (НСНИ) puts the line like this: demand for a property peaks up to the fourteenth day after it comes on the market, and if there are no enquiries by then, the price has been set wrongly and the property is overpriced. For comparison, the Zimoti portal gives about 33 days to a deal in Varna for the first quarter of 2026, with no published methodology.
The arithmetic is harsh: six per cent of €115,900 is €6,954, and half a year of waiting on an overpriced listing costs the same money plus the time. Why a property stays unsold is covered in Why the property stays unsold.
A line the seller learns about at the notary
Article 186 of the Obligations and Contracts Act (ЗЗД) says that the costs of the contract and the other expenses connected with the transfer of ownership are borne by the buyer, except in the sale of real estate, where the costs are paid by the parties in equal shares.
So by law half of the notary fee falls on the seller. In practice the buyer almost always covers it, but that is an agreement, not a rule, and its place is in the preliminary contract. A seller who has not read this article goes into negotiations without knowing he is conceding something. A buyer who has read it comes in with an argument.
The fee itself is not negotiable: it follows a scale in the Tariff of Notary Fees (Тарифа за нотариалните такси), applied to the higher of the agreed price and the tax assessment (данъчна оценка), plus VAT. In the main example half of it is about €293.
And there is a line here that almost no online calculator includes. If the notary drafts the notarial deed (нотариален акт), a second fee is due in the full amount of the first. Under Article 186 of the Obligations and Contracts Act, half of this doubling again falls on the seller, so €293 becomes €587.
The amount is small against the size of the deal, and that is exactly what makes it unpleasant. The argument over it happens on the day at the notary, in front of everyone, over money nobody planned for.
The documents are added to these lines too: the full set of records and certificates comes to under €30. Negligible, but never zero.
Two lines that are either zero or huge and the first is tax
Tax is the line with the most widespread mistake in the whole subject, and the mistake is one word.
Article 13(1), point 1, letter (a) of the Personal Income Taxes Act (ЗДДФЛ) exempts the income from the sale of one residential property if more than three years have passed between acquisition and sale. Letter (b) exempts up to two properties of any type after more than 5 years, with agricultural and forest land left out of that count.
The word “one” does not mean “first”. It means one per tax year.
A seller who sells his home in March after owning it for eight years, and a second apartment in November after owning it for four years, usually assumes both are exempt, “because both are over three years”. They are not. The first sale is clean, the second is taxable in full, and on a profit of €30,000 that is €2,700, discovered only in April of the following year, when the money has long been spent.
There is also the opposite extreme. A property received as a gift and sold quickly is taxed with an acquisition price of zero, so the tax is calculated on the whole sale price: at €108,946 that is close to €9,805. But the same gifted property, held for over three years and the only residential property sold that year, is tax-free exactly like a purchased one. A gift is not a trap in itself, only in combination with haste.
And third: paragraph 5 removes the whole exemption for income from business activity as a trader. Where the line runs between an owner who sells and a trader is not decided by the number of deals but by the judgement of the revenue authorities and the courts. That is why the question is asked before the second deal, not after the fifth. The whole mechanism of the tax is described in When you pay tax on selling a property, and when you don’t.
The second is the mortgage
and it has two separate traps
The first trap is purely a matter of accounting. The remaining debt to the bank is not a cost of the deal. It is someone else’s money that never belonged to the seller. It sits in the sums only because it is the largest in absolute terms, and because sellers regularly treat it as a reduction in the price. That is why the sums are read on two levels: first the net from the deal, then what is left after the bank.
The second trap is more expensive, because it is about the calendar. Paying off the debt does not delete the registration. A seller who repaid the loan four years ago is usually convinced the property is clear. The mortgage remains registered, and deleting it is a separate step that requires the bank’s consent.
The deletion itself costs under €200. The cost of the mistake is not in the tariff but in the days: tracking down an employee to sign consent on a loan closed years ago, notarisation, filing, processing time. During that time a buyer with a mortgage cannot draw down the loan, because the certificate of encumbrances (удостоверение за тежести) must show only the buyer’s own mortgage. The deal does not collapse, it shifts, and the deposit (капаро) has a deadline. How a deal with a registered mortgage proceeds is described in The loan is paid off. The encumbrance stays..
Renovating “to sell” is an immediate cost and the return on it is unconfirmed
The last line is also the one most often taken on voluntarily.
According to Varna price lists for 2026, a refresh renovation comes to about €120 to €220 per square metre, so the order of magnitude for 70 sq m is between €8,400 and €15,400. At the other end, latex painting alone, labour only, is about €1,000, and with fine skim coating over €2,600, before materials.
The problem is not the amount. The problem is that nobody can say how much of it comes back.
There is no Bulgarian study with a described methodology on the return on renovation at resale. The figures that circulate in articles on the subject come from foreign markets and are retold without methodology, so they do not apply to an apartment in Varna.
What is certain is the direction of the cash flow. The money put in enters the sums as a cost immediately and in full. It enters the price only to the extent that two people recognise it: the buyer and the bank’s valuer, who looks at the condition, not at the invoices. When it is worth it and when it is not is covered in Renovation or a ready property.
The sums do not depend on the neighbourhood
and that is the good news
If we run the same lines through five different slices of the Varna market, with identical assumptions (a 6 per cent discount, a 3 per cent commission excluding VAT, half the notary fee including VAT, documents, no tax, no renovation, no mortgage), the result is unexpectedly orderly.
A one-bedroom apartment in Kaysieva Gradina listed at €103,000: 90.9 per cent remains. A one-bedroom in Vinitsa at €115,900: 90.9 per cent. A two-bedroom in Vladislavovo at €129,990: 90.9 per cent. A two-bedroom in Chaika at €259,000: 91.0 per cent. A two-bedroom in the Centre at €280,000: 91.0 per cent.
The prices differ by a factor of 2.7, and the column on the right barely moves. The reason is mechanical: the two big lines are percentages, and the fixed ones are so small that they do not show.
So the seller’s basic sums are predictable and can be worked out in advance. The unpredictable ones are the other two: tax and the mortgage, precisely the ones that depend on the date of acquisition, on the number of deals in the year and on the state of the property’s register entry (партида), not on the neighbourhood.
And one more number for the same line. Without the discount the five slices give between 96.7 and 96.8 per cent. The whole argument about the “high commission” is over just over three percentage points, while the six points of discount pass without comment.
That is why the subject does not end with a calculator. It ends with one date and one question: when was the property acquired, and was another property sold in the same year. The answer to that question moves more money than everything else on the list.
Frequently asked questions
How much of the asking price is left for the seller?
With identical assumptions (a 6 per cent negotiation discount, a 3 per cent agent’s commission excluding VAT, half the notary fee including VAT under Article 186 of the Obligations and Contracts Act, and documents, with no tax and no mortgage), between 90.9 and 91.0 per cent of the asking price remains. This was checked across five slices of the Varna market with prices from €103,000 to €280,000, so the result hardly depends on the neighbourhood or on the size of the deal. The reason is mechanical: the two big lines are percentages, and the fixed ones are too small to show. Without the discount the same lines give between 96.7 and 96.8 per cent.
Who pays the notary fee when a property is sold?
Under Article 186 of the Obligations and Contracts Act, the costs of the contract in a sale of real estate are paid by the parties in equal shares. In practice the buyer almost always covers the whole fee, but that is an agreement, not a rule, and its place is in the preliminary contract. The fee itself is not negotiable, because it follows a scale in the Tariff of Notary Fees, applied to the higher of the agreed price and the tax assessment, plus VAT. If the notary drafts the notarial deed, a second fee is due in the full amount of the first, and under the same article half of the doubling again falls on the seller.
When does the seller owe no tax on the sale?
Under Article 13(1), point 1, letter (a) of the Personal Income Taxes Act, the income from the sale of one residential property is not taxed if more than three years have passed between acquisition and sale, and under letter (b) the same applies to up to two properties after more than five years. The word “one” means one per tax year, not the first ever, so a second sale of a residential property in the same calendar year is taxable, however long the property was held. Separately, income from the sale of property acquired by inheritance and bequest, and of restituted property, is not taxed. The exemption does not apply to income from business activity as a trader.
How much does deleting an old mortgage cost and why does it matter?
The deletion itself costs under €200. It matters because paying off the debt does not delete the registration: the mortgage stays on the property’s register entry until a separate step is taken with the bank’s consent. While it remains registered, a buyer with a mortgage cannot draw down the loan, because the certificate of encumbrances must show only the buyer’s own mortgage. The cost is small, but the time is not: tracking down an employee to sign consent on a loan closed years ago, notarisation and filing all take time, and the deposit under the preliminary contract has a deadline.
Listing a property this autumn?
Start with one date.
Check when you acquired the property and whether you have sold another property in the same calendar year. Open the property’s register entry too: a repaid loan does not mean a deleted mortgage. These two checks move more money than all the other lines put together.
Send us the notarial deed and the remaining loan balance. We send back the eight lines with numbers for your case, including our 3 per cent commission, and the figure that actually reaches your account. If the tax line is borderline, we will tell you that the answer is for an accountant, not an agent.
This material is general information as of December 2026, not tax or legal advice. The calculations are illustrative, based on explicitly stated assumptions, and are not an offer.
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