OK, so we sell older property here on Ebay.

When you are looking for a Bulgarian property, especially since distance buying at auction, you need to look closely at the photos to see if the house you are looking at is the one you really want.

Bulgarian properties were built without much planning in the past, generally they have been built by local (Often unskilled) tradesmen using traditional teqniques that are sometimes forbidden in todays cautious building world.

When looking at photos of houses at auction, check-

• The corners, the bottom of the walls, the top of the walls. Is there dark spots (Could indicate dampness), is there painted spots (Could indicate an attempt to "paint over" the dampness). Obviously there is dampness somewhere or another with older Bulgarian properties, but not in every room, you may as well live in a dirty sauna! If a whole houses has been painted, look carefully at what has been covered up, it could be large areas of dampness or cracks, at least if there are cracks you should see then to work out if they need sealed or pinned.
• The roof. Is it slanted, is it not straight or bowed at some point? If a roof is not straight it may mean just bad design (Remember these houses were generally built with little or no actual physical plans) or it may mean that it could collapse because it is weak (Could be woodworm, weak joist etc) so this may cause issues in the future. As a general rule of thumb, we check the roofs are straight and even before selling to others, sometimes the roof is solid though and able to withstand some more years or rain, heat and cold.
• Check the village in the background. Is there people, is there modern cars, do the houses around the house you are looking at look like they are well looked after? It depends what you are looking for, but you generally want a village which is vibrant (Or is aspiring to be vibrant) and that money (Or skills, or love...) are coming into the village.
• The walls. Is there large cracks on the houses, if they have been painted you may not see them.
• The floors. Many Bulgarian properties (Including many we sell) have compressed mud floors rather than plain old concrete or wood. Although traditional Bulgarians have been happy with these for years, you dont really want to put a new wall to wall carpet down on these. If a floor has mud on it instead of wood or concrete, then it may be necessary to dig out the mud and re-lay the flooring, which actually isnt so expensive.

I hope you have found this guide useful. The views in this guide were written by myself (Aaron) and do not reflect the views of any website or individual other than myself.