A draft bill for a Law on Intermediaries in Transactions Involving Real Estate has been tabled for approval by the National Assembly

On April 2, 2025, a group of Members of Parliament tabled in the National Assembly a bill regulating the role of intermediaries in transactions involving real estate. The proposed bill, on the one hand, introduces requirements regarding the operation of real estate agencies, while on the other, it makes the profession of ‘realtor’ a regulated profession, limiting the scope of its practitioners to persons explicitly authorized to do so. The law will not apply to the work of receivers, liquidators, court enforcement officers, attorneys-at-law, notaries public and other professions regulated by a special law. At this time the draft bill has not been adopted, therefore the question remains whether this profession will become regulated by law.

With regard to real estate agencies, the requirement has been introduced that these are merchant entities registered under the Commerce Act or entities authorized to perform commercial activity and established in a member state of the European Union or the European Economic Area that have not been declared insolvent, respectively are not at present in receivership or subject to insolvency proceedings. The business entity must have in place a valid professional malpractice insurance. In addition to that, the firm must be entered into a register, provided for by law, by the Registration Agency and must provide information about the brokers who will be carrying out the activity, including a certificate of clean criminal record, and information about their professional qualification and experience.

Eligible to work as a realtor are individuals with secondary education specializing in ‘real estate’ covering the standards for ‘Realtor’, i.e. the third qualification degree within the ‘Real Estate’ professional profile, or persons with higher education and at least one year’s experience as realtor from the last two years. Thus, the requirements concerning educational status are quite restrictive and, in practice, persons may be listed in the register on the basis of their higher educational degree only for a brief period of time after the entry into force of the law, following which an individual will have to be listed in the register first and only then will they be able to practice the profession of realtor. Additional requirements are: a clean criminal record with no prior convictions, or full rehabilitation before the law; a valid professional malpractice insurance, or if the applicants are foreign nationals, compliance with the Foreign Nationals in the Republic of Bulgaria Act and the Labor Migration and Labor Mobility Act. Realtors are registered under the section of a particular real estate agency, i.e., for 2 years they will have the right to practice their profession only through that agency. After the initial 2-year term is up, a realtor may register for a further 2 years only under the condition that he or she has undergone at least two professional training sessions.

To practice the profession of realtor, a person needs to meet a number of requirements. He or she is under obligation to:
– Maintain and improve their qualification;
– Work under a services or employment contract exclusively for a single agency;
– Establish a relationship with the client through a contract which meets certain content requirements provided for under the proposed bill;
– Supply to their client credible information, never use misleading advertising; inform their client of any facts with significant relevance to the transaction, including if the realtor also represents the other party to the deal, and avoid conflicts of interest.

The bill explicitly provides that no realtor will have the right to advertise a property without having in place a valid contract with the client who is eligible to enter into the relevant type of contract.

The proposed bill, if enacted, will resolve some long-standing issues concerning the work of intermediaries in transactions involving real estate. All the same, during the parliamentary debate the language of the bill will need to be fine-tuned, especially as far as the realtors’ educational status requirements are concerned.