Review of a property purchase in Bulgaria by the Chumachenko family

Bulgaria Avenue continues to publish real reviews from people who have bought property in Bulgaria with the help of our Bulgarian real estate agency.

We are introducing you to the stories of our clients who chose Bulgaria to buy a home for relocation, holidays or investment.

Today we are pleased to present a review from the Chumachenko family about the purchase of an apartment in Varna. The purchase of this apartment in Bulgaria took place during the lockdown.

"We are living through a strange, confusing, somehow stifling year. But still, it is a year of life.

Stirred by the news of an unknown illness in the spring, the decision to travel to Bulgaria and see for ourselves whether we should fulfil our long-standing dream of living by the sea finally took root in my mind.
Life has unfolded in such a way that the «desire for a change of place» has never left me. Fate has given me the chance to live and travel in Algeria, then to find myself in Paris and fall in love with the wonderful lands of France. And now the desire has arisen to set foot on Bulgarian soil.

Bulgaria has always seemed to me like a world of its own: Slavs, Orthodoxy. Our common alphabet, so familiar and so great, for it made it possible to spread the written word across Slavic territories. Greek church texts, translated into Old Church Slavonic and written down in Cyrillic by Greek and Bulgarian monks, came to Russian lands  from Bulgarian monasteries. This is historical memory. Perhaps it is what beats in my heart.  

Since childhood I have loved the sea. I think this love comes from the travel books I read and from my restless father, with whom every summer we would drive from the Volga, from distant Kostroma, to the Black Sea.  My father loved the sea, the marine element, the salty wind of the storm. 

My choice in Bulgaria became Varna. If we were to buy an apartment, then it had to be in this city. I have remembered Varna since Soviet times, its streets that seemed so elegant to me.

It all began in the spring, with offers for the sale of property in Bulgaria online. I would leave a message — an enquiry with a developer company — whenever something caught my interest. After my messages there were calls from Bulgaria from company representatives. That is how the acquaintance with Zhenya came about. But it is only now that I allow myself to call her that. At the start of our acquaintance Evgenia Prokazova asked me, like the other realtors, about wishes, possibilities, about when we intended  to come to  Bulgaria.  Then she began to send photographs  of the apartments for sale, always warning that the market is fluid, that apartments sell fast, and that there is no guarantee a home we liked would still be unsold by the time we arrived. We spoke on the phone, we wrote to each other. No, it was not everyday communication, but the thread of that communication was not lost. I liked Evgenia’s calm voice, I liked the fact that she heard me, that she wanted to understand my wishes. Gradually Varna took shape for me  — its districts, its streets. Sometimes a gift would arrive from Evgenia — a quiet sunrise over the sea’s surface, the delicate blossoms of  Bulgarian roses. The great power of the internet.

We flew to Bulgaria in the last days of September. I remember the evening of our meeting with Evgenia. The glazed terrace of a café, and beyond the dark window below, the white foam of the quiet autumn sea surf.

Evgenia and Dimitär had prepared a viewing programme of the apartments for sale for us. On the morning of the next day we set off to see the offers. We did not visit everything indiscriminately, but only what matched our criteria. During the viewings both Evgenia and Dimitär were tactful and calm. I noticed that  Evgenia was trying to sense, to understand «our place», «our choice». And the apartment we chose, I think, was the one Zhenya was the first to recognise as «our apartment».  

Handling all the formalities did not take long, because everything had been organised in advance: the bank, the notary, the lawyer, the meeting with the seller of the apartment. Evgenia and Dimitär helped us take every administrative step, they were our interpreters, we turned to them with every request, they were our good genies in Varna. Realising the unpredictability of the situation because of possible border closures within Europe, we drew up a power of attorney for the purchase of the apartment in Evgenia’s name.

On 15 December of this difficult year we became the owners of an apartment in Varna, where from the balcony there is the sea. We are grateful to Alexander, who worked to build the house and to fit out the beautiful cosy apartment that has become ours, in this house. Of course, we are grateful to Evgenia and Dimitär. They really work well. And they also have kind hearts.  And I hope that our young friends will be frequent guests on our balcony, from which it is so wonderful to look at the sea.

From the Chumachenko  family"