Оферта на български адвокати към английски граждани - от времената, когато искаха големи пари

Being thoroughly experienced in Bulgarian international mortgages, we recognise the need for, and value of, quality, communicative and attentive legal representation. Having such a solicitor can mean the difference between a relatively easy settlement, and a nightmare!

As this service is so important to our clients, and we recognise that some of them were very poorly represented, we are now offering legal representation for our clients. We now have two solicitors working out of our Sofia office-.

The legal service offer is more focused towards conveyancing and processing, as opposed to legal advice. If you are looking for a service that will scrutinize and advise you on contracts and do preliminary title searches, then please reply to this email to let us know. We will organise you a higher level legal service but, naturally, this is at somewhat more of a cost.

The work that will perform will include

• Verifying the vendor's right to sale in the Land Registry, with respect to the ownership rights and potential encumbrances over the property, at the moment of the notary transfer;
• Review of the documents related to the construction of the building such as architectural plans, building permits and other authorisations required by Bulgarian law;
• Represent you in front of the Notary, and sign on your behalf, for the transfer of title;
• Represent you in front of the Local Tax Administration and declare you the owner/s of the property;
• Calculate your tax liability to the Notary and State;
• Liaise with your developer, agent and bank to source the required documents for a mortgage;
• Registration of your name as new owner in the BULSTAT register.

For the above services, we charge a fixed rate of £525. For the sake of comparison, many legal firms offering similar services charge between 1 - 1.5%, plus an extra charge for a mortgage. We feel our fee is very competitive. The reason we can offer such a competitive rate is twofold: 1) we already need and source a lot of the documentation any solicitor would need; and 2) a quality legal service makes a huge difference to our work- it means processing mortgages becomes that much easier!

Please be aware, as with any legal representation, there are some further costs. These will include the legalisation of documents at the Foreign Office and compulsory municipal taxes (amounting to about 3.3% of the purchase price, as stated in the Notary Deed). These fees will be standard for any solicitor.

We also have a small charge for our solicitors travelling. The solicitor is required to represent you in front of the Notary in whichever municipality you are buying in. Hence there is a small travel expense, charged as follows:

• Sofia free;
• Ski resorts and around - 75;
• Coastal resorts and around - 100
• Central/Rural/North - 75

our limited company application will be reviewed and handled by, and the administrators will assist in preparing the documents required.

Below we have included a short breakdown of the process of forming a company (referred to as an OOD or EOOD) and the costs involved. Please be aware that this process takes about 6 weeks to complete, depending how quickly you can return documents to us. If you are wanting to mortgage in the company name, then the incorporation has to be done before the mortgage application can be made.

The process for forming the company is:

1. You choose a company name and we check its availability, reserve it and buy the registered name certificate;
2. We will prepare the necessary documents (7 in total, including a company application, POA, signature specimen, 2 Articles of Association, Constitutive Deed, and Declaration under the Commercial Act) and send them to you. These need to be signed by you and other company directors, and 3 of them need to be witnessed by a solicitor and legalised at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. If your company has more than one Director, we will need signature specimen and declaration documents for each Director;
3. We open you an escrow bank account (a special, locked account) into which the minimum company capital (BGN5100) needs to be deposited;
4. We will present all the above company documents to the District Court to be registered in the Commercial Register. This takes the District Court 2 weeks to process;
5. We publish an announcement of your new company in the State Gazette, as required by law. This takes 2 weeks or more;
6. A company seal, or stamp, is made. To have one of these made we need to present your court decision for registration;
7. We register your company with BULSTAT, a business/economic register of the National Statistical Institute;
8. We register your company with the Regional Social Security Institute;
9. We register your company with the tax authorities;
10. We foreclose your escrow account and transfer the funds to a current account that we open for you;

As you can see, there is quite a bit of work involved in incorporating a company, hence the 6 weeks required to complete it. Bulgarian Home Loans charge a very competitive £300 fee to incorporate a company. Please note that this fee is often what is quoted by other legal services. However, you will not always be told about the other fixed, unavoidable costs involved. On top of this, there are court fees and document fees, as listed below:

• Booking the company name - 100 Lv;
• Bank fee for opening special account - 25 Lv
• Translation of the apostilles - 55 Lv;
• Court fee for the setting up of OOD/EOOD - 126 Lv;
• Court fee for a copy of the Court decision - 3 Lv;
• Publishing in the State Gazette - 34 Lv;
• Registration in BULSTAT - 61 Lv;
• Company seal - 10 Lv;
• Apostille of 3 documents at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London - 50 (plus 2 more per second and subsequent Director, charged at 25 each)

So the total cost involved, in addition to our fee, is BGN414 (Bulgarian Leva) in Bulgaria, and £150 in the UK. Hence the total cost of the company setup, including our initial fee, court costs and document legalising costs is £600 (for a sole applicant). Please note that a significant part of this cost is legalising documents in the UK. This can be vastly reduced if you sign the documents in Bulgaria, or take them to the Bulgarian Consulate in London during opening hours.

Please also note that you will require BGN5100 (approx. £1780) to deposit into the special locked bank account. This is not a fee and will be at your disposal, in your Bulgarian company account, as soon as the process is complete.

To further your enquiry, and have Bulgarian Home Loans set up your Bulgarian limited company, all you need to do is send us a copy of the passports for all company directors, the nominated company name (clearly spelled out in block letters) and a cheque made out to Bulgarian Home Loans for £600 (this for a sole applicant, and can also be paid over the phone via debit or credit card). We will immediately begin the process.