One in Ten Bulgarians Has a Villa

People living in the town of Pernik (near Sofia) have the biggest homes, data from the 2011 census show. On average, 1.4 people live one home in Pernik, while in the capital Sofia the average number of people sharing a property is 2. The average home in Bulgaria has an area of 79.7 sq.m., the data also show. People living in the cities have slightly larger homes than the people living in the villages, National Statistical Institute data reads.

Even though it is the total built-up area that is taken into consideration, due to the development boom and demographic problems Bulgaria finally left the top of the EU overpopulation ranking and has positioned itself in the middle.

According to statistics today an average of 1.9 people live in one home while 10 years ago that figure was 2.1. The density of population remains higher in the cities - it is 2.1, while in the villages one home houses 1.5 people on average. In the last ten years for one reason or another Bulgarians have decreased by 564,331 people while properties have increased by 198,274. Only in the years since 1989 private development has led to the construction of 813,000 new homes. The total number of homes in the country is 3.887 million, as 66% of them are in the cities, the census shows.

According to the statistics a little over 2% of Bulgarians live in homes of 400 sq.m. and more. However, 3,556 other structures do not cover even the definition of a home – they are wagons and huts. Statistics also shows that in 1975 rural and city houses were almost equal in number but today this ratio has changed and 72.5% of Bulgarians live in the cities and 27.5% in the villages.

There are most properties in the capital Sofia where there are a total of 607,000 apartments but only 17.5% of all Bulgarians live in them. The number of people owning more than 1 property has also increased in the last decade. Almost 4% of the apartments in the cities were empty during the census which means they are either a second property of the owners or that the owners were abroad. One in every ten Bulgarian owns a villa. There are most vacant houses in the regions of Bourgas and Vidin. However, the reasons for that are very different as along the seaside the percentage comes from the tourist properties while in Vidin it comes from the demographic processes and the emigration.

The census also shows that every third home has new window joinery and almost 16% of the properties have external insulation. The census also shows that 97.5% of all homes are private property while in the EU only half of the people own their homes.

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