{"id":5228,"date":"2021-01-28T19:02:53","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T17:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/?p=5228"},"modified":"2021-02-05T16:45:55","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T14:45:55","slug":"brekzit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/brekzit\/","title":{"rendered":"Bexit \u2013 consequences regarding acquisition and ownership of real estate in Bulgaria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since the citizens of the United Kingdom expressed their\u00a0will to leave the European Union\u00a0in a referendum\u00a0in 2016, the\u00a0long and complex process of\u00a0ensuring a smooth transition and an organized withdrawal of the United Kingdom\u00a0began.\u00a0The Withdrawal Agreement\u00a0with which the\u00a0United Kingdom left the European Union\u00a0entered into force on 31 January 2020.\u00a0However, the consequences of Brexit were not felt immediately because of the intended\u00a0transition\u00a0period\u00a0in which the EU continued to\u00a0treat the United Kingdom as a member state.\u00a0This\u00a0transitional period\u00a0lasted from\u00a01 February\u00a0to\u00a031 December 2020.\u00a0With the beginning of 2021, the consequences of Brexit became effective and raised questions related to the acquisition\u00a0and ownership\u00a0of real estate in Bulgaria.<\/p>\n<p>Colliers Legal Practice comments below on the changes concerning the acquisition and ownership of real estate in Bulgaria by British citizens and legal entities in force as from 1 January 2021.<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Acquisition of real estate<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As from 1 January 2021,\u00a0natural and legal persons from the United Kingdom\u00a0have the status of citizens of third countries to the European Union.\u00a0According to the Bulgarian legislation,\u00a0foreigners or foreign legal entities can acquire the right of ownership over land\u00a0only\u00a0under the conditions of a\u00a0respective\u00a0international agreement.\u00a0Currently,\u00a0there is no such agreement\u00a0between the Republic of Bulgaria and the\u00a0\u00a0United Kingdom, therefore\u00a0the\u00a0British citizens are\u00a0prohibited\u00a0from\u00a0acquiring land on the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria, except in cases of inheritance by law\u00a0(which is permissible only for natural persons).\u00a0In practice, this means that British citizens and companies are not allowed to acquire\u00a0land\u00a0(land plots) through transactions (purchase, sale, exchange, donation, in-kind contribution, etc.).\u00a0The prohibition does not apply to the acquisition of ownership of other real estate (e.g.\u00a0apartments, houses, buildings, etc.).<\/p>\n<p>As a result of the changes in the acquisition of real estate,\u00a0difficulties may arise for British citizens who wish,\u00a0for example,\u00a0to acquire a house\/apartment with a yard.\u00a0In practice, these difficulties are solved by the persons registering a Bulgarian commercial company (usually a limited liability company), which is treated as a Bulgarian legal entity and the above restrictions in the acquisition of land do not apply to it\u00a0(except for agricultural land).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Ownership\u00a0of real estate<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>British citizens and companies who own land in Bulgaria as at 31 December 2020 will not suffer negative consequences as a result of Brexit.\u00a0Their rights to the owned property remain unchanged and\u00a0they benefit from the protection of the Bulgarian Constitution, which states that the alienation of ownership rights can take place only if the\u00a0following\u00a0prerequisites\u00a0are present:\u00a0\u201cby virtue of law, in the presence of state or municipal needs that cannot be met in any other way,\u00a0after prior and equivalent compensation\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> The present article has informative purpose and does not represent legal advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since the citizens of the United Kingdom expressed their\u00a0will to leave the European Union\u00a0in a referendum\u00a0in 2016, the\u00a0long and complex process of\u00a0ensuring a smooth transition and an organized withdrawal of the United Kingdom\u00a0began.\u00a0The Withdrawal Agreement\u00a0with which the\u00a0United Kingdom left the European Union\u00a0entered into force on 31 January 2020.\u00a0However, the consequences of Brexit were not felt [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5229,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colliers-residential.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}