On 28 October 2026 the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office announced charges against two men who had taken a €5,000 deposit for properties in Studentski grad and Malinova dolina. In a separate check, police found a forged notarial deed for two plots of around 4,000 sq m, and an operation on 26 October led to five arrests and the seizure of notarial documents, sketches and seals.
The case is not an outlier. This guide therefore takes the owner's side: what you can do today to make a fraudster's job harder, and how to react if you find that a transaction has already been registered against your property. The legislative changes the Ministry of Justice proposed in August are covered separately in our news piece on the anti-fraud package.
The schemes repeat. The ones we see most often:
What they share: the fraudster is counting on nobody keeping an eye on the property. Almost everything below is about changing that.
If you own one of these, the steps below are not excessive caution.
1. Know what is registered against the property. Bulgaria's Property Register keeps the full history of entries on each property — sales, mortgages, attachments, lawsuits. A periodic check (say once a year, and always if the property stands empty) shows whether anything appears that you did not sign. The check is a paid service of the Registry Agency and can be ordered online or at a counter.
2. See which alerts you can switch on. The Registry Agency's online portal has a section for subscribing to events in the registers, available after logging in with a qualified electronic signature or a tax-authority PIC. In early 2026 the Minister of Justice announced that the Agency was building SMS alerts for searches and copy requests on a property, not only for transactions. As of late October we cannot confirm that this is live for all properties — check in your account what is available for yours.
3. Treat your ID card like your front-door key. If it is lost or stolen, report it to the police straight away, not when you next need a new one. Do not leave copies of it "just in case" with people or firms that have no real need for one.
4. Review old powers of attorney. If you ever gave someone power to dispose of a property, check whether it is still needed. A power of attorney can be revoked; notify the attorney and the notary who certified it in writing. Give new ones for a specific transaction, naming the property, a minimum price and an end date. More on form and risk in our guide to dealing through a power of attorney.
5. Keep the originals safe — the notarial deed, certificate of heirs, sketches. What a deed actually says and how the registration entries read is covered in our guide to the notarial deed.
6. Have someone "see" the empty property. A neighbour, the building manager or a relative who will call you if they notice viewings, a changed lock or strangers. Watch bills and post — an unexpected letter from a bank, a private bailiff or the municipality is a signal.
Under an amendment to the Registration Regulations adopted by the Council of Ministers in November 2025, from 15 January 2026 uncertified copies of registered deeds are released to outsiders only on proof of a legal interest, assessed by the registry judge. The aim is to make it harder to collect information on other people's property — often the first step towards a forged document.
For owners and their heirs the procedure is unchanged — they can obtain a copy of their own deed as before.
Act quickly, in this order:
Time matters: the longer the property sits in someone else's name, the more transactions can be stacked on top of it.
The 28 October case affects buyers too — the deposit was paid to people who were not the owners. Before you pay anything:
The details are in our guides to deposits and preliminary contracts and to legal checks before buying.
A fraudster relies on a property nobody watches and documents nobody checks. A register check, care with your ID card and powers of attorney, and someone looking in on an empty property close most of the doors. If you do find a transaction you never made — report it and register a claim, without delay.
This is general information, not legal advice on a specific case. If you own an empty or inherited property and would like us to check its register entries and documents, or you suspect something is wrong — call us or come into the office. We will go through the entries with you and tell you what comes next.
Information verified as of October 2026.
