Bulgarian House Prices Rose 15.5% Over the Year, Second-Fastest in the European Union

Bulgarian house prices rose 15.5% in the year to the second quarter, the European Union's second-fastest rate, against an EU average of 4.7%, Eurostat said.

House prices in Bulgaria were 15.5% higher in the second quarter of 2026 than a year earlier, the second-fastest increase among the European Union's member states, according to the quarterly house price index Eurostat published on 1 October. Across the EU prices rose 4.7% over the same year and 1.2% over the quarter, while the euro area recorded 4.0% and 1.1%; Bulgaria's quarterly gain was 4.5%, more than three times the EU figure.

Only Portugal grew faster over twelve months

Portugal led the annual table at 16.5%, with Bulgaria next at 15.5% and Lithuania third at 14.3%. Prices rose over the year in 23 member states and fell in three: Finland by 2.7%, Luxembourg by 2.2% and France by 0.8%. That distribution is the context an investor needs for the Bulgarian number. A 15.5% annual rise is not a continental pattern that Bulgaria happens to sit inside; it is roughly three times the EU average, and Eurostat places only Portugal above it.

On the quarter the fast growth was concentrated in the east

Lithuania posted the largest quarterly rise at 5.0%, followed by Bulgaria at 4.5% and Romania at 4.4%. Twenty-four member states saw prices rise between the first and second quarters and only two saw them fall, one of which was Hungary at 1.4%. The grouping is worth noting: the three fastest quarterly markets are all in the EU's eastern half, and all three were also near the top of the annual table. Bulgaria is therefore not accelerating from a flat base — the quarterly and annual readings point the same way.

Two methodological limits belong beside the headline

Eurostat's index is nominal, so a 15.5% rise is not a 15.5% gain in purchasing power, and the release is not seasonally adjusted, which makes a single quarter-on-quarter figure noisier than the annual one. The index also covers all residential property bought by households, new and existing, across the whole country, so it describes the national average and not any particular city or coastal segment.

Why Glopra publishes no price level for Bulgaria

Our Bulgarian market row carries no price per square metre and no rent, and the reason is printed on the row rather than hidden behind a blank cell. Bulgaria's property portals block automated access to their statistics pages, and the sources that are open — the national statistical institute, Eurostat and the mapping platforms built on them — publish sale prices without any matching rent figure, so no price-and-rent pair from a single publisher could be assembled. The rent side fails for a related reason: no national monthly rent per square metre is published by the same source as the price, and the one official rent-per-square-metre figure that exists belongs to a 2020 city statistics module that cannot honestly be paired with a 2026 price.

That gap is why today's release matters more for Bulgaria than for most markets. Eurostat gives the rate of change without giving a level, which is exactly the half of the picture Bulgaria is missing, and it comes from a publisher whose methodology is open.

What a foreign buyer actually faces

The figures we do publish for Bulgaria are the ones that survive scrutiny. Buying and then selling a Bulgarian home absorbs roughly 8.6% of the price. A non-resident's gross rent attracts a 10% final tax regardless of the rent level, and an owner resident elsewhere in the European Union or the European Economic Area can elect a recalculation with a standard expense allowance that brings the effective rate to 9%. Ownership is freehold for apartments, but a buyer from outside the EU can hold land only through a company. Our bubble risk score for Bulgaria is 56 out of 100, which places it in the moderate band rather than the elevated one — a reminder that fast price growth and stretched valuation are not the same measurement. None of this is advice on whether to buy; it is the cost and ownership frame inside which the 15.5% sits.

Sources: Eurostat, House prices up by 4.0% in the euro area, euro indicators release 2-01102026-BP, 1 October 2026 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/product?code=2-01102026-bp

Market data: Bulgaria