Stuart Law of Assetz warned yesterday that there was too much hype involved in selling Bulgarian property, a view we have held at Bewarethesharks.com for the past 2 years and consequently we advised investors to avoid this market.

"There have been massive amounts of misinformation because people have thought they were dealing with investment advisors when they're actually dealing with estate agents," warned Stuart Law.

Although the company sells properties in Bulgaria, and claims on its website that

“Bulgaria is turning into one of the hottest property markets in Europe.. We (Assetz) are one of the top International Estate Agents based in the UK,” and recently produced the following headlines,

27 March 2006 – “Bulgaria tops property investment hotspots.”

21 June 2006 – “Bulgaria strengthens lead as property hotspot.”

Assetz appear to be less enthusiastic today about Bulgaria than it was less than 4 months ago and is ironically concerned about the hype!

The company use a “tracker” to determine a sort of league table for property investments overseas with Bulgaria performing very well indeed, according to their detailed research and methodology.

Farrell’s View

As I predicted some time ago, in fact at the beginning of 2005 in the Sunday Times, the lid is coming off the Bulgarian property market and I really do feel for naïve investors who have bought particularly on the coast in Bulgaria, but also in the mountains where the carrot of the 2014 Olympic Games was dangled as a “holy grail” for the investor.  Those skiers amongst us knew there was absolutely no chance of Bulgaria winning and as such Bulgaria did not even make the shortlist.

The hype surrounding the Bulgarian property market hasn’t just appeared as a revelation in October 2006, it has been here for a good 2 years, although I concede that not everyone saw it and many companies have contributed to it!

Continue to avoid Bulgaria.