• A new functionality on the website of the bank will make the procedure simpler for those who are willing to buy real estate
• Despite the market dynamics, prices of residential properties reported a slight slowdown of 0.3% in the past quarter

A new functionality on the website of UniCredit Bulbank makes it possible for anyone willing to acquire real estate using a mortgage loan to apply for it entirely online. The mortgage certificate will spare bank customers time and visits to the branch and will provide them with information about the financing they could rely on within a couple of minutes.

“Developing the mortgage certificate is another step towards the fulfillment of our commitment to make banking simple for our customers and to offer maximum convenience through our various digital channels,” said Borislav Genov, Director of Retail Banking Division. He highlighted that the tool is very convenient for anyone who is about to select a property, so that they know what is the loan amount they could receive.

The real estate market has been extremely dynamic over the past months according to the observations of the economists of UniCredit Bulbank. Following a very strong growth of prices during the previous three quarters - 3.2%, 1.7% and 3.5% qoq, respectively, the market eventually reported a slight slowdown in the past months.

The slowdown may be explained with the fact that the prices of residential properties in Sofia declined by 1.5% compared to the previous quarter, following a prolonged period of nine months with a total growth of 13.5%. The strongest growth of prices in the second quarter of 2021 was reported in Varna - 4.5% compared to the first quarter. Meanwhile, this growth is a lot smaller in Ruse (2.5%), Plovdiv (2.2%), Burgas (1.4%) and especially Stara Zagora (0.5%).

This statistics confirms the trend of diverging dynamics of housing markets in the different regions of Bulgaria. In a large part of the country the housing prices remain in line with the income of the predominant group of citizens. However, the prices are growing in the most popular regions and segments in the cities.