Solicitor recommended by estate agent risky in Bulgaria

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prettypiggy

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Buyers are rarely interested in the legal mumbo jumbo and details and often the mumbo jumbo so to speak is left aside for the agent who really has no vested interest in this at all. Legal representation in Bulgaria is by no means routine. Whether you chose an independent solicitor or use the one recommended by your agent might be key for the security of your investment. Estate agents who sell property in Bulgaria will normally inform you that they provide legal service as part of the deal, however they often neglect to state that the lawyer who will be acting on your behalf is of their choice. I came across www.bulgarianlawyer.net, a feature giving details about the pitfalls and the legalities on the real estate market. It turns out that by law agents in Bulgaria (UK and Irish included!) are not liable. Subsequently they pressure the solicitors they recommend to rush through the job at the expense of investor’s security. For example they don’t use letters of credit and don’t arrange the developer to be paid not directly, but conditionally through the notary and this way to assure that the buyer gets what he has been promised. These solicitors depend on agents to find clients and so they sacrifice the interest of the buyer in order to gain agent’s favor. Thus paradoxically the worse service they provide, the more clients they have! For example there could be extreme (but still possible!) instances when because of sums as insignificant as 20 Euro one might lose his property just because his solicitor has been pressured by the agent to ease the procedure by declaring a correspondence address that isn’t current in the so called Bulstat register. There are also instances of not collecting the proper documentation and that’s relevant if the developer doesn’t honor the contract. On top of this agents cost more than the cut they get from the buyer. Using an agent in Bulgaria inflates the price in excess of 12 %, sometimes in excess of 20 % and that’s easy to conceal because property there’s so cheap. Anyone with a similar story?
 
There have to be problems – otherwise the Bulgarian property would not be that cheap. This one reminds of the Roman maxim: divide and rule. If a buyer is to expect any degree of control over the way his legal matters are taken care of, he has to make sure that lawyer and agent are no mates. These two better be suspicious of one another so that they betray each other. However how is a buyer from Ireland to know a solicitor in Bulgaria?
 
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