This is a warning tale for all those potential foreigners eager and willing to enter the Bulgarian real estate market. It may be becoming easier to purchase property, but it can be much easier for someone else to come and steal it away. This is the story of how our attic was stolen. You would not think an attic can be stolen, but yes, it can be. Two months later, 2000 pieces of paper, three lawyers, and by all legal means we still cannot regain possesion. I cannot even get back my favourite ladder that was stored in the attic; now I can't change our lightbulbs. Trap 1: Avoid problems in summer. The first warning to all foreigners is: if you are going to have a problem, try to avoid the whole summer period for it to occur. Everyone from the court offices and almost every other office goes on holiday and many administrative functions come to a standstill. It is always a very bad idea to plan for problems during this time of year. If you can arrange it, avoid having problems that will require the help of the judicial system over the summer period. Spring and autumn are ideal times for problems. Trap 2: The police: "to serve and avoid". The police, in cases of emergency, can be as useful as a pair of stilettos in the snow. There is no point calling them, as first they will try to avoid coming to your aid, then, if things look complicated, they will try to pretend they are not there, and lastly, they always blame someone else. The Bulgarian police has as much knowledge about the law as Mickey Mouse has of Quantum Physics. The police motto in Bulgaria is "avoid problems at all cost". In essence, don't ever expect the police to help you unless you believe in Santa Claus also. Trap 3: Foreigners are invisible. As a foreigner in Bulgaria, you must come to understand that you do not exist, especially if you don't speak the language. Even if you do speak the language, legally, most institutions still do not believe you have any legal rights in the country. Basically, you become the invisible man as far as everyone is concerned and although they may see you, they will prentend not to see you. How do you become visible? Produce cash... Cash has a way to make you visible, but remember when the cash disappears, you also disappear. An attic gets stolen. This is not a tragic story. These stories happen so often in Bulgaria that they are like a pimple in the face of a hormonal teenager - how can this happen in a country that is supposed to join the European Union in a few months? I guess only the EU gods know best.

My wife and I live in the centre of town, in what used to be a quiet old apartment block. My wife is Bulgarian and I am a foreigner. We live in her apartment that she bought back in 1998. Two years ago, we decided to purchase an attic that belonged to one of our neighbours. Everything was legally perfect. For two years we had no problems with this attic... but it is always quiet before a storm. One Friday afternoon, towards the end of summer, back in August 2006, I arrived home and needed some things from the attic. So I get the keys, I go to the attic. I open the attic door and I find a great brick wall behind the door that was never there before. I am sure I would have noticed this brick wall if it had been there before. I was stunned, I was completely in shock. I was quickly joined by my wife who could not believe that someone had put up a brick wall.
At first we thought some idiot had made a mistake and done this by accident. But suddenly the neighbouring door opened and a Bulgarian couple came out and flatly stated this was their property! My wife assured them that it was ours. They said that we had "illegal documents" and to go away.

We had not seen these people for three years. At that time, we had problems when their daughter, who runs the Arts Hostel in Angel Kunchev Street who had/has been renting their attic space as a hostel, but this was an old issue and best served for another story.

These people live in Paris and had decided to come and pay us a visit and cause a little drama in our lives, build a nice brick wall and then run away. Even now the police and lawyers, court officials cannot find them. How can they? They are in France, hiding!

In essence, we had a brick wall behind our attic door. The nice man and his wife had created a hole from their attic space to gain access to ours. In one day, they blocked our door with a brick wall and that was that. Oh - did I forget that they also removed everything inside of any worth? Including my nice, valuable 49.99 leva ladder! (If you read this, I want it back! I need to change my light bulbs!) The good thing is that they wrote a "protocol" of what they found inside and gave it to the police. In sum, they disclosed everything to the police of what occured that day. This neighbour had decided that whatever documents we possessed were invalid, and made a quick executive legal decision in which they granted themselves the legal powers to take this attic by force and keep whatever they found inide as war booty. To the conquerors go the spoils. They also gave themselves permission to do reconstruction and, furthermore, claim that the public space on the rooftop was theirs.

Why go to courts? Why go to the police? They are a waste of time they decided... best to take the law into their own hands. Now that I am on the other side of this issue, and I am waiting for results from the court and investigations from the police, I am beginning to think that this is not such a bad idea after all. So, our attic space remains behind a brick wall, the police are carrying out investigations and we are waiting for a court decision to regain our possessions that either have not been thrown away or "borrowed". The nice neighbours have returned to France and now reside in Paris, and the court bailiffs cannot find them to serve them the legal papers. The judicial system is moving at its super-fast sloth pace and something that should have taken seven days (prescribed in the actual act) has taken two months. Two months later and basically the only issue we have resolved is that there is an illegal brick wall where there should be a door.  A municipal representative came to verify this and saw it - yes, there is a brick wall behind the door.

The cherry on top. If we do not take back possesion of the attic within a prescribed period of time, by law, these people can claim this attic as theirs. In essence, if someone manages to kick you of your home for a long enough period and take possession, they can claim the property as theirs. Ok, I am not 100 per cent sure of this, but... Scary? You have been warned. Welcome to the Bulgarian real estate market.