Bulgaria property sales fell 22.1% in Q3, but mortgages tell a different story

Bulgaria recorded 45,312 registered property sales in the third quarter of 2026, compared with 58,184 in the same quarter of 2025. That is a year-on-year fall of 22.1%, based on Property Register records and calculations published by local market researchers. Compared with the second quarter of 2026, when 45,965 sales were recorded, the decline was much smaller, at about 1.4%. The annual comparison therefore conveys a sharper contraction than the immediate quarter-to-quarter movement.

The national total should not be confused with the number of newly built homes sold. The register includes different kinds of real property, while a single registration does not tell readers what the buyer paid per square metre or why the transaction occurred. Sofia recorded 7,282 sales during the quarter, while Varna had 2,853 and Plovdiv 3,354, according to the local analyses. City-level conditions are not uniform.

Mortgage registrations present another layer that requires careful definition: different analyses count all registered mortgages or specifically contractual mortgages, resulting in different totals. For that reason, this report does not treat mortgage registrations as an exact number of mortgage-financed purchases. Buyers and investors should check local liquidity, comparable contract prices and financing conditions before reading lower transaction volume as proof of falling property values.