The number of unoccupied offices in Sofia, Bulgaria, is growing because of a lack of demand, according to Bulgarian-language mass-circulation daily Trud, as at the end of June 2009 about 15% of offices in Bulgaria’s capital city were vacant.

Trud also said that Irish people were selling their real estate in Bulgaria at prices reduced by 20-50%, while another newspaper reported that a foreign financial institution was buying up flats in Sofia.

It was also recently reported that the number of real estate transactions in Sofia had fallen by -58% since the beginning of 2009, while the number of mortgages had decreased by two-thirds. Raiffeisen Real Estate said that property deals have shed an average of -42% nationwide and by -58% in Sofia in the first half of 2009.