The business meeting started with Dr. Miroslav Vladimirov from Varna University of Economics, who analyzed the market of residential properties in Plovdiv and the region and noted that, according to data on the website, the average growth of housing prices in Plovdiv was 15.4% for the last year.
“The Covid pandemic gave a very strong impulse to the residential property market. That impulse grew in a wonderful 2021, which is not a year that happens very often, and then the market started to die down. What is happening now is not a decrease in the number of transactions, and a decrease in the rate of growth of transactions. Our market as a volume of transactions is still much higher, but not higher compared to 2021, but compared to that in 2019,” commented Vladimirov regarding the residential real estate market in recent years years.
More information about new construction in the region, such as quality and prices, was presented by construction entrepreneur Miroslav Yazov.
“Buyers are currently born after the 90s and a very large number of them have lived somewhere abroad, they have prepared visions of what they want to buy, how it should look, what quality it should be and they are extremely picky in their choices “Many builders bet on exactly these types of people, as a result of which they began to add all kinds of extras to their projects. Naturally, all these things cost money, so it is quite normal that the price of new construction only goes up,” noted the expert.
According to Yazov, the cost of labor is also affected by the recent catastrophic earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, as the mass labor force of Turkish origin mobilizes in their country and terminates their visas for Bulgaria.
“The cost of labor is extremely high at the moment. Due to the fact that there is an awful lot of work, most of the good craftsmen prefer smaller projects, so the cost of labor is the thing that will hit the cost of new construction very seriously,” he predicted. .
According to “Post Bank” data, presented by Dr. Nikolay Lazarov, loans in 2022 grew by 5 billion and 200 million euros, and deposits grew by nearly 9 billion euros.
During the business forum, Lazarov also commented that 9% of housing loans in the bank in 2022. were absorbed in Plovdiv and the region, with the absorbed volume of housing loans in the city being 35%.
“One of the main trends in housing lending at “Post Bank” in the period 2020-2022 is that there is a 20% increase in the average amount of housing loans in the city of Plovdiv,” he added.
