Name: Tom Brailsford
Nationality: Nottingham, England
Place of birth: British
Occupation: Managing director of a real estate agency
Date of Arrival: August 2004

Darwin could have studied evolution by observing Tom Brailsford's progress through his adopted country. In a year the 30-year-old Englishman from Nottingham transformed himself from a budding entrepreneur to a successful real estate agent and father at the centre of a "kompaniya" of Bulgarians and expats.

The metamorphosis began on a flight from Sofia to the UK two years ago. Brailsford was helping out his father by scouting properties for sale here. On the plane he sat down next to a Bulgarian woman. They got talking and clicked: six months later, they were married and he was living in Sofia. Their son Daniel was born soon after.

Brailsford has lived and worked around the world, from Australia to South America. Once he found himself settled in Sofia, however, he encountered a new kind of foreign territory - responsibility in the form of a family and career.

It wasn't easy, but he survived and prospered.

He set up a website called Bulgariapropertysearch, found apartments and houses for sale through word of mouth and acted as the middleman between the sellers and buyers whom he also knew through personal connections. As someone who had just come to the country, the job was slow going.

"It was hard work for no money," he said.

But like a novelist who spends a year scribbling notes before sitting down to write a story, Brailsford now realises he wasn't spinning his wheels during this period. He was in fact learning the lessons he needed to succeed.

He met builders who were seeking buyers for the housing developments they were planning, for example. So suddenly he had an enormous supply of property to sell. Then his wife stepped in (he considers her a genius) and took over advertising for the website, boosting its presence on Google and other search engines. The calls and e-mails from prospective buyers started rolling in.

"Business is going very well," he said.

He's found that his original approach still has a lot to recommend it. Many of his clients are people who have been referred to him by their friends. He and his wife recently hired a Bulgarian employee. So he's doing something right.

"We don't have a huge client base," he said. "We give people the real deal. It's not even me being a good guy. It's just good business. We still sell a lot on personal reference. A good reference is worth a thousand ads."

There are still some hard patches. Security guards recently called him at 3am, for example, to inform him that his office was robbed and his laptop stolen. "The iron shutters on the window were bent out of shape," he said.

He expects the real estate market in Bulgaria to calm down, but remain strong. Property values in some areas have increased two- or threefold over the past few years, first reflecting - accurately - adjustments from the influx of foreign capital and then - inaccurately - the boom of crazy expats racing to own a piece of Bulgaria before it joins the European Union.

Prices at the seaside and in the country won't tank, but he doesn't expect the massive profits he and his colleagues have been making to last forever. The market will cool, which is ultimately good for clients, he said. He expects values to remain high while costs stabilise so that newcomers won't be priced out.

Property values along the Greek border, for example, shot up by more than 100 percent two years ago, he said. That can't go on forever. "They're going up so massively that you can't expect them to go higher," he said.

At the same time, however, Brailsford is bullish on the Sofia market, which he expects to stay strong.

"If I were purely investing, then I'd say Sofia," he said. "Capital cities always reflect the true nature of the country's real estate. It won't go down. I don't know of any capital city where you'll be in a bar and be able to go snow boarding in a hour. It's a real selling point. Maybe you can do that in Switzerland, but at what cost?"

Brailsford happily fits some English stereotypes, such as his love of football. It's a unadulterated, gut pleasure he allows himself and shares with his baby son, who is often seen sporting a tiny red-and-white England jersey bearing the cross of St George. He especially loves Dimitar Berbatov, a Bulgarian striker who plays for his local team back home, Tottenham.

He's often not enamored with Bulgarian football, however. Anyone who's attended a match in Levski Stadium, for example, might be surprised by the racist or homophobic chants of the spectators - especially when a member of the opposing team is black. Occasionally it might be good natured, but Brailsford notes that a lot of the stuff fans say here would get them knocked out in Nottingham, London or New York.

"The racist chants. I don't like that," he said. "It's not laughing at stereotypes. It's monkey sounds, out-and-out racial hatred. It's such a cliched insult. When you make those kind of sounds, you're showing off yourself as a monkey."