A new round of reports in the foreign press, including two UK newspapers, include warnings about the pitfalls of the property market in Bulgaria - and experts, while not predicting a market collapse, say that there could be "corrections".

An article in the Irish Independent on July 19 2008 dealt with buyers who failed to meet tax obligations when buying abroad and who got into trouble after failing to get legal advice before signing contracts.

On the problems encountered by buyers getting into distress because of a developer failing to meet contractual commitments, the newspaper quoted Tom McGrath, a property lawyer specialising in overseas markets, as saying "the worst offenders are in Bulgaria".

McGrath was quoted as saying that in Bulgaria, it happened that investors were asked for more money at the close of a sale or were asked to pay a certain sum under the counter.

"We ask clients not to participate in this activity - they're not doing themselves any favours," he said.

Simon Palmer, of Empire Consulting, warned that it was very short-sighted to try and dodge tax on foreign property investments.

According to the Irish Independent, Palmer advised people to avoid emerging markets, such as Bulgaria and Turkey, and tourist resorts, because they are too risky. Wiser investments are made in the UK, a French city, or Germany.

The online version of the Telegraph on July 19 quoted a survey by real estate agency Savills and website holiday-rentals.co.uk of 1500 buyers showing that there had been a surge in purchases of resort properties priced from 70 000 pounds sterling to 200 000 pounds in countries such as Bulgaria, Austria and Montenegro, and a big rise in sales of apartments in new "city-break" hotspots on budget airline routes.

"Many of these investors are not affluent and have bought homes abroad to provide a future pension pot or short-term windfall on the assumption they would appreciate. Most have buy-to-let mortgages - some more than 90 per cent of a property's purchase price - and are heavily reliant on rental income to cover monthly costs," the Telegraph article said.

"Years of low-cost airline flights and easy mortgage availability have fuelled this trend. So is the foreign holiday-home market the next victim of the double whammy - rising oil prices and severe restrictions on borrowing?"

The Telegraph said that the survey's authors believe the market will change, but not collapse.

"The investment market has already diminished rapidly, just in six months," the paper quoted the Savills and holiday-rentals.co.uk survey as saying. "But we will see a return to the traditional use of the holiday home as a lifestyle choice, and that demand will actually rise in the near future."

In an article published on July 16, Romanian newspaper Adevarul said that consultancy companies such as Pricewaterhouse Coopers were warning about some imminent corrections on markets such as Romania and Bulgaria.

"It's possible that where the project has been unfoundedly developed or localised in an uninspired fashion, we might encounter situations of financial difficulty," Adevarul quoted Speranta Munteanu, head of Real Estate department from Pricewaterhouse Coopers Romania, as saying.