If you want to sell or buy an old rural house in Bulgaria, you need to know when this house was built or if it has construction papers. One of the rare documents that is required by the notaries in Bulgaria upon notary certification of sale/purchase deals is the certificate for construction tolerance. the legal grounds for it is § 16 of the Bulgarian Spatial Development Act:

§ 16. (1) (Supplemented, SG No. 65/2003) Any construction works constructed prior to the 7th day of April 1987, in respect of which a construction file is lacking but which were permissible under the effective detailed urban-development plans and under the rules and standard specifications effective during the time of performance thereof or according to this Act, shall be tolerable construction works and shall not be subject to removal and to ban on use. Any such work may be subject to a transfer transaction upon presentation of a certificate issued by the authorities which are empowered to approve the relevant development-project designs, to the effect that the said construction work is tolerable.

According to our solicitor practice this requirement is strictly applied mainly in Stara Zagora area. Notaries in the rest of the country are not so keen to apply this requirement. The legal court practice is ambiguous regarding the fact whether a if a property deal has been performed without this certificate enclosed to the notary file of the property deal. Our professional solicitor opinion is that this regulation doesn’t affect the deal, because this certificate only establishes a construction status of the property. the property has been there before the law. Pursuant a general legal principle a certain fact has to be judged as of the moment the fact has occurred and according to the law when this fact has occurred. In that connection, if the building was built according to the requirement of the law, which was in effect when the property has been built, the building should be legal.