|
Private Sales & Auctions I started off working in conjunction with a small agency in Stara Zagora to promote a few properties for sale after I had bought one or two rural houses here. From there I moved on to renting an office of my own in Stara Zagora and working in conjunction with 2 or 3 agencies in the area as well as listing properties for sale in other regions of Bulgaria through contacts with other agents. Then as the recession started to take hold and Bulgaria received negative press in the media, no longer the hot spot to buy in, I gave up the office and scaled down the website listings to those from people who had personally contacted me hoping to sell their properties in Bulgaria and those properties I knew personally and had visited. We are now at a strange time in the property market in Bulgaria. Many people who bought several properties over the last few years are now looking to offload one or two of these, others who renovated an old Bulgaria house into their dream home are trying to sell up and move back to the UK. But on the other hand there are green shoots in the property market with enquiries and sales picking up slightly over the summer of 2009 and showing a definite improvement in 2010 and with many sick of the rain and rat race of the UK, they are looking to move to sunnier climates and due to low property prices and long hot summers, considering Bulgaria. Whilst I am happy to give advice and help where I can to anyone thinking of buying in Bulgaria, I am stepping back from being involved in the actual sales process personally and intend to develop the website into a place where people can advertise their properties for sale. My aim is to turn TheTravelBug website into mainly an advice site for Bulgaria, living abroad and expat issues and just have private paid listings of properties for sale, where all enquiries go to the owner and I take no commission and have nothing to do with selling process. I have recently been doing a large amount of promotion and have had articles (linking back to this website) published on a number of popular websites and blogs. These include the InternationalPropertyInvestment blog, The New York Times 'Raising the Roof' Blog, the OverSeasProperty Mall amongst other. This website now receives over 150,000 hits a month and close to 4000 unique visitors. After recent website optimisation and an ongoing campaign the site is listed in the top 10 of google for many popular keywords such as 'houses for sale in Bulgaria' (6th), 'Bulgaria property investments' (7th), "Bulgarian property investing' (6th), 'property for sale in Bulgaria' (10th), 'houses in Bulgaria' (13th), 'buying property in Bulgaria' (14th) and 'property in Bulgaria' (25th), I charge a small fee for advertising and promoting private sales. I do not simply list your property for sale and forget about it as many other websites and agents do, I place it for sale on my website, as well as on my forum and let all my current newsletter and forum subscribers know about your property (around 650 people in total) and also post listings on various other sites, including other free and paid sites. I match clients with suitable properties so will always keep your property in mind if someone is looking for something like what you are offering. MyBulgaria charge 50 GBP for a 6 month listing of one property, RightMove Overseas.co.uk charge 75 GPB a month and Viviun International Property Listings charge $19.95 a month. So I think you will agree that 75 Euros for a listing until your property is sold, along with continual marketing of your property(s) is a good deal. The site is obviously focused on Bulgaria and France, however I am happy to list properties in any country and will be developing this side of the website as new listings are received. 5 Euros from every payment received is donated to AidBG - helping Bulgarian street animals. For 75 Euros I offer the
following: Your contact details will be listed with your advert details and enquiries will go directly to you. I charge no commission on a sale as all enquiries and negotiations will be dealt with by you. Multiple Listings: For two properties there
is a 10%
discount (total of 135 Euros) and a further 13% discount for each
property after that so each property will basically be 65 Euros per
listing. PROPERTY AUCTIONS You only have to look on ebay to see that there are hundreds of properties listed for sale there. Ebay is a great platform for show casing property and raising some interest, however with such a large number of properties listed it is important that your listing is well promoted. From experience, ebay buyers are looking for real bargains. Properties that sell or receive interest are those that have very low starting prices and no reserve, however much depends on the property. Please note that receiving a winning bid on ebay is not in anyway legally binding. Bidders are merely expressing an interest in the property. Because of this you can get quite a few time wasters and even if someone wins your property auction, you may never see any money from them. Many bidders have very unrealistic expectations. They will bid on a property which is only selling for a couple of thousand Euros and expect it to be in good condition. This has happened to me. However, on the other hand, some are just looking for real bargains and are happy to send the money for the property within a few days without even seeing the property. It is important to answer all queries quickly and thoroughly and provide as much detail as possible. There are a couple of companies and individuals offering to list your property for sale on ebay but they tend to charge incredibly high fees. An upfront fee of £1000 is not unusual with a further 10% of the sale price after the completion of the auction. If for some reason you don't want to list your property yourself on eBay or are unable to, I am happy to prepare an advert for you on eBay and list your property for sale under my eBay ID. I will prepare the advert in 'html' so it can include several photos. Once your auction is live, I will publicise the auction on my facebook page and twitter page. The cost is £50 to list your property on eBay and then 10% of the total sale price (winning bid). Contact me for more details and for a pro forma detail sheet to fill in about your property. |