The Revival of the Housing Market in Sofia
The Revival of the Housing Market in Sofia

Summary/Abstract: : Two significant events represented turning points in the modern history of housing and housing policy in Bulgaria. The first was the change of ownership after the Second World War through nationalization of part of the private property and the expansion of the share of public property; the second went in the reverse direction, toward privatization, denationalization (restitution), and the consolidation of private property. Both turn of events changed the order of development of the urban environment and housing. These turning points had an impact on the very image Bulgarians had of a home and produced different cultures of and attitudes to household living conditions. After the first change of property, the housing market was practically abolished; after the second, it was revived. The transition period after 1989 has been marked by the wide amplitudes of the social course of reforms in Bulgarian society; unlike the decline in certain social spheres, housing construction and housing transactions have progressed in these years. However, circumstances contrary to the housing market soon appeared, related to the overall social processes in the country and their impact on the material interests of each citizen, including the lack of a housing policy at the central and local level, mass impoverishment, unemployment, but also the emergence of the new rich, of social inequality in the urban environment, and of entrepreneurship. Despite the difficulties and paradoxes, the housing market in Sofia, of all the most animated and full of contradictions, is becoming a permanent part of the lives of citizens, focusing and reflecting the transformed attitude to the home, bearing the legacy of tradition and of fashions, the deposits of past misconceived aesthetics, and the impact of the global economic processes of our time.

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