At a Glance: Bulgarian property buyers head straight to the beach

Bulgarian property buyers do like to be beside the seaside, according to TheMoveChannel.com's latest At a Glance. The infographic, which depicts all Bulgarian real estate activity on the portal for the last 12 months, shows that investors head straight for the coast, with 40.05 per cent of buyers searching for property in Sunny Beach.

The interest in Bulgaria's biggest Black Sea resort is a colourful indicator of the role that the seaside has to play in the country's market. Indeed, the Burgas province on the East coast accounted for almost one in five (19.36 per cent) Bulgarian enquiries on TheMoveChannel.com in the last year. Burgas' beachside appeal is so well-known, in fact, that investors are looking to the coast before they even start to view property; it accounts for four of the top 10 most searched-for places to buy a home.

But it is not just beaches that bring in the buyers: the mountains do too. Three of the top 10 searches targeted real estate in ski resorts, with Pamporovo, Borovets and Bansko all falling inside the top five. That demand snowballs directly into enquiries, reveals the infographic, with three of the top 10 most popular regions all famous for their ski accommodation opportunities.

Indeed, the Smolyan province, home to Pamporovo, was the third most popular area in terms of enquiries, accounting for 14.06 per cent of activity since November 2011. It is no coincidence that Bansko's home province of Blagoevrad is also in the 10 most popular provinces, generating 4.02 per cent of enquiries - enough to earn it ninth place, just below the province of capital city Sofia.

It is interesting, then, that the most popular place for Bulgarian property in the last 12 months was neither a ski nor beach resort. The province of Veliko Tarnovo, which boasts a central position in the country and an array of historical landmarks, has a different kind of tourist appeal. This was strong enough to generate the highest number of enquiries on the portal, narrowly beating Burgas with a share of 22.19 per cent.

The At a Glance series also analyses the search behaviour of Bulgarian house hunters on Google. The chart shows that buyers most commonly searched for "Bulgarian property" and "Bulgarian properties", with activity peaking between the months of February and June. While overall search volumes broadly stayed steady, searches for "apartments for sale in Bulgaria" and "houses for sale in Bulgaria" both grew over the 12 months. Interest in flats more than trebled from 104 searches in the three months to January 2012 to 326 in the three months to October 2012, while houses saw demand rise from 970 searches to 1190 over the same periods.

Editor Ivan Radford comments: "Bulgaria has been in and out of TheMoveChannel.com's top 10 most popular countries in the last year and this latest At a Glance infographic gives us a chance to see why. Much has been written about the low prices of Bulgaria's property and, more controversially, the market's reliability, but the infographic clearly shows that the country's main appeal to buyers lies in tourist hotspots. Both for investors seeking rental yields and lifestyle buyers, Bulgaria's seasonal balance of seaside towns and ski resorts gives it a year-round potential that other countries do not have.

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