How to open a real estate agency in Bulgaria: from registration to the first enquiry

A licence for real estate agents: Bulgaria has none

The first question is almost always about the licence. The answer is short: as of late October 2026, Bulgaria has no licence, exam or mandatory register for real estate agents and agencies. There is no law on real estate brokerage in force either.

There have been drafts. The 51st National Assembly received two bills — in December 2024 and in April 2025. They proposed a register at the Registry Agency, education requirements and professional liability insurance. Neither was passed. No such bill has been introduced in the current National Assembly so far.

No licence does not mean no rules. Brokering as a business is a commercial activity under the Commerce Act, the agency is an obliged entity under ZMIP, and agreements with clients fall under general contract law and the Consumer Protection Act. More on these below.

The business: ET, EOOD or OOD

Brokering deals as a business is a commercial activity (Art. 1 of the Commerce Act), so an agency starts by registering as a trader. The choice is usually between three forms.

Registration is in the Commercial Register, kept by the Registry Agency. You can file online, and the fee is then at most half the paper fee. The registrar decides three working days after filing. The data reaches the National Revenue Agency automatically. For an EOOD or OOD, the beneficial owners are entered in the register too.

The application must describe the business activity in words. The code under Bulgaria’s classification of economic activities (KID) is a separate, optional field. For brokering sales and lettings it is 68.31, real estate intermediation, under KID-2025, the Bulgarian version of NACE Rev. 2.1. Valuation and consultancy fall under 68.32.

Which form works better for tax depends on expected turnover and on how you plan to pay yourself. That is a conversation with your accountant before you file, not after. If you will take cash payments, ask about a fiscal cash register too.

VAT: when registration becomes mandatory

You do not have to register for VAT on day one. Since 1 January 2026 the threshold is in euro: an agency must register once its turnover in Bulgaria for the calendar year exceeds €51,130 (Art. 96 of the VAT Act). The application is due within 7 days of the day the threshold is exceeded — not at the end of the month, and not at the end of the year.

So turnover needs watching all year round. One large commission in the autumn can push you over within a week.

• Voluntary registration is possible below the threshold (Art. 100). You can request it at the Registry Agency together with registering the business. It makes sense when most of your clients are companies — developers, for example — but that is your accountant’s call.
• Services from abroad. If you buy services from a business in another EU country and you, as the recipient, owe the VAT on them, you may have to register under Art. 97a regardless of turnover. The application goes in at least 7 days in advance. Advertising on social networks and search engines is often invoiced exactly this way. Check with your accountant before you launch the first campaign.

When and how to issue the commission invoice is covered in “The commission: from the deal to the invoice”.

ZMIP and personal data: from day one

Two sets of obligations start on the day you register, not at the first deal.

ZMIP. Anyone who brokers real estate deals as a business is an obliged entity under the Measures Against Money Laundering Act (Art. 4, item 18). For lettings, the law applies to deals with a monthly rent of €10,000 or more. In short, this means:

• written internal control rules, adopted within 4 months of registration (Art. 102);
• identifying the client from an identity document and keeping a copy of it (Art. 53);
• keeping the documents for 5 years after the relationship with the client ends (Art. 67);
• training staff on the rules (Art. 101(11));
• on suspicion of money laundering, notifying the Financial Intelligence Directorate of the State Agency for National Security (DANS) immediately, before the deal (Art. 72).

The details are in our article on ZMIP for real estate agencies.

Personal data. Clients give their data to the agency, not to the agent: the agency is the controller under GDPR. Before the first client you need:

• A privacy notice — who you are, why you need the data, how long you keep it and what rights people have (Art. 13 GDPR). On the website, in the forms and in the office.
• A record of processing activities (Art. 30). The exemption for businesses with fewer than 250 people does not apply when processing is not occasional. In an agency it happens every day.
• A contract with everyone who processes data on your behalf — the software provider, the website host (Art. 28).
• Access only for those who need it, and a plan for breaches. A personal data breach must be reported to the Commission for Personal Data Protection within 72 hours (Art. 33).

An ID card may be copied only where a law requires it (Art. 25g of the Personal Data Protection Act). ZMIP is such a law, so the copy taken for identification is lawful. A copy taken out of habit, without that basis, is not.

If you are leaving another agency, the database there belongs to it as the controller. Build yours from people who give you their details themselves, not from an exported list. More in “What the agency keeps when a broker leaves”.

Agreements with clients

The Commerce Act defines an intermediary as a trader “who brokers the conclusion of deals as a business” (Art. 49). The fee is owed by one or both parties as agreed, and where nothing is agreed, the customary fee is owed by both (Art. 51). Relying on “customary”, though, means arguing about it. So the commission goes into the agreement.

If the client is a consumer and the agreement is signed away from your office — at their home or entirely online — check with a lawyer how the Consumer Protection Act rules for such contracts apply: what information has to be given up front and how the 14-day right of withdrawal works (Art. 50 of the Consumer Protection Act). If the client was not told about the right of withdrawal, the period becomes one year and 14 days (Art. 51 of the same Act).

The Commerce Act also requires an intermediary to keep a journal: every day it records the contracts concluded — the parties, the date and the essential terms — and the parties get extracts from it on request (Art. 50 of the Commerce Act).

How to win the owner over to exclusivity is in “Exclusive agreements: why owners resist and what helps”. Ending an agreement with an agency has an article of its own.

The first listings and enquiries: portals, website, system

The first listings rarely come from advertising. They come from people who know you: owners you have worked with, neighbours, relatives, past buyers who are now selling. For the first two or three months this is your main channel, and it is worth running as one — with a name, a phone number and a note for every conversation.

Portals are where buyers search. Each has its own terms for agency profiles and its own packages. Pick two or three that suit your area and the kind of property you handle, and buy a package for as many listings as you will actually have. As you grow, the difference between posting by hand and a connection to your system shows every time a price changes — see “How to post one property to 10 portals”.

The website is the only place where your listing does not sit next to someone else’s and the enquiry is yours alone. It does not need a hundred listings to work. It needs every one of yours, kept up to date, and a form that reaches an agent.

The system costs least when it is there from day one. An agency that starts in a spreadsheet ends up migrating a spreadsheet a year later. What goes into the price of such software is set out in “How much software for a real estate agency costs in Bulgaria”.

In OptiEstate a property is entered once and goes out to the connected portals — the system has ten, each with its own template — and a sold or archived property comes down from them by itself. The website runs on the same database: an enquiry from its form goes straight into the system, and the responsible agent gets a notification. The Starter plan is €15 per agent per month excluding VAT, for up to 3 agents and one office. Core is €22 and Pro is €32.

For the first meetings with owners you will also need numbers: what is left after the commission, what the mortgage payment is, what a purchase costs. The calculators on our website are free.

The first months: what to count

At the start the numbers are small, so they are easy to ignore. Yet that is exactly when they show most clearly which channel works.

Of the five, time to first contact matters most at the start. Buyers write to several places at once and talk to whoever answers first. Why — in “Why enquiries go cold”. With advertising, cost per lead misleads, and the real maths is in “What a client from a Facebook ad really costs”.

In OptiEstate the enquiries list shows the average time to first contact, and in team goals you can set what share should be answered on time — within 15 minutes, for example. With automatic distribution and acceptance switched on, an enquiry the agent does not take within the window — 10 minutes by default — moves to a colleague who is online.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a licence to work as a real estate agent in Bulgaria?

No. As of October 2026 Bulgaria has no licence, exam or mandatory register for real estate agents, and no law on real estate brokerage in force. The bills introduced in the National Assembly in 2024 and 2025 were not passed.

Is a sole trader (ET) or an EOOD better for a real estate agency?

With an EOOD your liability is limited to your contribution to the capital, and since 2026 the minimum capital is €1. As a sole trader you are personally liable for the business’s debts. The tax difference depends on turnover and is a decision to make with your accountant.

When does an agency have to register for VAT?

When its turnover in Bulgaria for the calendar year exceeds €51,130; the application is due within 7 days after that. Registration may be needed earlier under Art. 97a of the VAT Act if you receive services from a foreign supplier on which you owe the VAT.

What is the KID activity code for a real estate agency?

68.31, real estate intermediation, under KID-2025; valuation and consultancy fall under 68.32. In the Commercial Register application the code field is optional, but the description of the business activity is not.

Can the agency copy a client’s ID card?

Yes, where a law requires it. ZMIP requires a copy of the identity document when the client is identified; without such a basis, the Personal Data Protection Act does not allow copying.