Property pre-contract in Bulgaria: deposit, court, deadlines

You paid the deposit (капаро, kaparo). The contract is signed. And then the seller stopped answering the phone.

This is the moment when people realise what they actually signed. A preliminary contract (предварителен договор) is not a small formality before the notary. Until the notary deed (нотариален акт) is signed, it is your main protection, and the law gives it a precisely defined force. No more and no less.

The preliminary contract does not make you the owner

When a property is sold by contract, ownership passes by a notary deed. That is what Art. 18 of the Obligations and Contracts Act (ЗЗД) says.

A preliminary contract is a promise to conclude this notary deed. That is why Art. 19 ЗЗД asks two things of it, and they are surprisingly few.

Written form. The law does not require notarisation. Notarisation does no harm, but it is not a condition for the contract to be valid.

The second requirement is the more important one. In a sale, the Supreme Court of Cassation (ВКС) treats the identification of the property and the price as the essential terms (Decision No. 170 of 29 November 2018 in civil case No. 3957/2017, III civil division). If the contract does not say clearly which property and at what price, a claim for the conclusion of the final contract will not succeed. The date for the notary and the method of payment are not essential terms by law, but in practice they decide when and how you can claim your rights. So describe the property precisely, with its cadastral identifier, and write a final date.

The word “kaparo” is not in the law. “Earnest money” (задатък) is

In the text of the ЗЗД the word “kaparo” (капаро) does not appear even once. The word “earnest money” (задатък) appears five times, all in the same article: Art. 93 ЗЗД.

The word alone does not decide anything. The court interprets what you agreed. According to the ВКС, even an advance on part of the price can have the force of earnest money, if the contract expressly says that on non-performance the sum is kept or returned at double the amount (Decision No. 198 of 17 January 2020 in civil case No. 661/2019, III civil division). But if it says only “advance” or “deposit” and nothing about the consequences, you risk the sum being treated as part of the price: if the contract is terminated you get it back, but not double. The safest course is for the contract to say “earnest money under Art. 93 ЗЗД” and to state both consequences expressly.

Read it carefully. The law does not say that the seller must automatically return double. It says that you may ask for double, and only on withdrawing from the contract. First you withdraw, then you claim the money. Case law adds two more conditions: you must be the non-defaulting party, that is, you must have paid what you owe or be ready to pay (Decision No. 133 of 15 March 2021 in civil case No. 3595/2019, III civil division), and the seller must be responsible for the non-performance. If the delay comes from a cause for which the seller is not responsible, for example a cadastral sketch that arrived late, double earnest money is not due (Decision No. 292 of 24 November 2016 in civil case No. 1784/2016, IV civil division).

Earnest money or a contractual penalty: they are not the same

A good preliminary contract usually has both. They work in different ways.

This paragraph works in both directions. If the seller has put a penalty of 30% on you for a one-week delay in payment, it is not beyond challenge.

For earnest money the ЗЗД has no such rule. So do not count on the sum being adjusted later. Agree the amount now, because that is exactly what you risk losing or getting back double.

The seller backed out. Your two routes

Now comes the choice that determines the next months.

The last sentence is the heart of it. There is no separate notary transaction after the lawsuit. The judgment that has come into force is the transaction.

How much does the second route cost? The state fee for the claim is 4% of the value of the claim, but not less than €25.56 (Art. 1 of the Tariff of State Fees Collected by the Courts under the Civil Procedure Code, as worded in State Gazette (ДВ) issue 18 of 2026). For a property, the value of the claim is the tax valuation (данъчна оценка) (Art. 69(1), items 2 and 4 of the Civil Procedure Code (ГПК)). To this are added the fee for registering the statement of claim, a lawyer if you have one, and the costs of the transfer, discussed below.

The first thing the court does: waits for registration

The statement of claim under Art. 19(3) ЗЗД must be registered in the Property Register, and this is not a recommendation. It is required by Art. 114 of the Property Act (ЗС).

Why is this the most important step? Because from the moment of registration, the seller’s transactions with the property cannot be set against you.

Read in plain English: if the seller sells the property to a third party after your claim is registered, that sale cannot be set against you. If the seller mortgages the property or someone puts an attachment (възбрана) on it, the same applies. If you have not registered, you lose exactly this protection. The reverse is also true: rights registered before your claim take priority. And the same text of the law has an exception: the state and the municipality may enforce their claims against the seller on the property, if those claims became due by the day of the transfer.

You win the case and still have no notary deed

The court judgment under Art. 19(3) ЗЗД is not the end. The Civil Procedure Code adds three conditions that buyers often overlook.

First, the court checks whether the seller is the owner at all. If not, the claim is dismissed, however good your contract is.

Second, if you still owe part of the price, the judgment is conditional and you have exactly two weeks to pay. This applies even when the contract says the notary deed is signed only after full payment (Interpretative Decision No. 4 of 9 May 2023 in interpretative case No. 4/2020, General Assembly of the Civil and Commercial Chambers (ОСГТК) of the ВКС).

Third, the court does not give you a copy of the judgment until the state has received its due. And this is written in two different places.

These costs also include the notary fee, as if the transaction had been concluded before a notary (Interpretative Decision No. 6 of 6 November 2013 in interpretative case No. 6/2012, ОСГТК of the ВКС, item 19), and in practice the local acquisition tax (for example ВКС, Decision No. 170/2018). In other words, the route through the court does not save you the fees of the transaction.

Note the end of the text of the Property Act. It speaks of the seller’s obligations to the state, not yours. You can win a case against a person with public debts and then pay their taxes to get a copy of the judgment. What you pay on their account you can set off against the remainder of the price (Art. 362(1) ГПК), but if you paid the whole price in advance, there is nothing to set off against. That is why the check for debts is made before the deposit, not after the court.

The six months to note the judgment

You won, you paid, you got the copy. One action remains, and it has its own deadline and its own penalty.

Who can actually sell you the property

The most expensive surprises come not from the text of the contract but from the other side. The seller may be the owner and still be unable to sell alone. A property acquired during marriage is, as a rule, common to both spouses, regardless of whose name it was bought in (Art. 21 of the Family Code).

In other words, the transaction is not void by itself. It is voidable, and the other spouse has six months from learning of it and at most three years from the transaction to attack it. All that time your property is in question.

If the property is co-owned, for example inherited by several children, there is a second restriction. A co-owner who sells their share to an outsider owes an offer to the other co-owners. We have covered it in detail in the article on Art. 33 of the Property Act.

What to ask for before you hand over a single cent

Every document in this list protects against a specific risk. That is why the reason is given next to each one, not just the name. We have described how to obtain the certificates in the article on the Property Register and in the one on the free check in the cadastre.

At the transaction itself the notary makes their own checks, but they have an exact scope and come only on the day of the notary deed, when the earnest money was paid long ago.

In other words, the notary looks at the title documents and the seller’s public debts, while the obligations for the property itself appear in the tax valuation. If the seller has public debts, the transaction can go ahead after they pay them, or if they agree in writing that they are paid out of the price and the buyer pays the sum into the budget (Art. 264(4) ДОПК). Mortgages and registered attachments, however, do not disappear with the sale, and co-owners and a spouse often do not show in the documents. That is why the check before the earnest money remains your concern. We have set out what the transaction itself costs in the notary fees calculator, and the differences between a sketch and a notary deed in a separate article.

The deadlines that expire quietly

The preliminary contract does not expire by itself when the date for the notary passes. It continues to bind both parties until it is terminated, and from that date the limitation period for the claim under Art. 19(3) ЗЗД starts to run (ВКС, Decision No. 292 of 24 November 2016).

You can read the full text of the two decisions here: Decision No. 286/2011 and Decision No. 521/2009.

The way to leave the contract depends on what you paid. If the sum is earnest money, withdrawal under Art. 93(2) ЗЗД does not require you to give an additional period: the ВКС holds that an agreement on earnest money releases the non-defaulting party from the procedure under Art. 87 ЗЗД (Decision No. 120 of 31 July 2019 in civil case No. 992/2018, III civil division). The withdrawal must still be clear and in writing, so that you can prove it. If you paid only an advance, termination follows the general rule.

After termination, what was paid is returned as paid on a ground that has fallen away (Art. 55(1) ЗЗД), regardless of who was at fault for the termination. The double amount, however, comes only from earnest money.

Frequently asked questions

Is the preliminary contract registered in the Property Register?

No. Art. 112 ЗС and Art. 4 of the Registration Rules (Правилник за вписванията) list what is registered and begin with the acts by which a right in rem is transferred or created. A preliminary contract does not transfer a right in rem but creates an obligation to conclude a final contract, and it is not in these lists. What the ЗС expressly orders to be registered is the statement of claim under Art. 19(3) ЗЗД. In other words, the protection comes from the lawsuit, not from the contract itself.

How much deposit is normal?

The law does not set an amount; the parties agree it freely. Think of it as the sum you risk: if you back out, the seller keeps it, and if the seller backs out, you can claim it double. More important than the percentage is whether the sum is agreed as earnest money and whether the deadline for the notary is realistic.

Who pays the acquisition tax?

As a rule the buyer, unless you agree otherwise.

Read the last sentence too. If you agree that the seller pays the tax, you are not released. You remain a guarantor, which means the municipality can claim the sum from you if the seller does not pay it.

The rate is set by each municipal council separately, within the limits the law sets.

Do I need a lawyer if I buy without a broker?

A broker and a lawyer do different things. The broker finds the property. The notary checks ownership and public debts, but only at the notary deed. The full check of encumbrances, co-owners and marital status before the earnest money is a separate job that the law assigns to none of them. If you do it yourself, the list above is the minimum.