Price growth and liquidity are telling different city stories
The six official city series do not produce a single league table. Varna leads recent price growth, while Plovdiv has the strongest transaction position. Those are different signals and they lead to different questions.
Which major Bulgarian city markets combine price momentum with evidence of continuing transaction participation?
Varna and Sofia lead the longer price comparison
Varna recorded the strongest three-year HPI growth among the six published city markets, at 65.5%. Sofia followed at 56.4%, with Burgas at 46.2%. Stara Zagora and Plovdiv were closer together at 38.8% and 38.3%, while Ruse recorded 29.1%.
This ranking is useful, but it should not be read as a ranking of investability. The index shows how transaction prices have moved from their earlier level. It does not show the current price per square metre, rental yield, supply by neighbourhood or the condition of an individual property.
The latest quarter adds a different layer
Annual HPI growth in 2026 Q1 was strongest in Burgas at 17.7%, followed by Sofia at 16.0% and Varna at 13.2%. Plovdiv recorded 8.8%. Ruse was the clear exception, with its total-dwelling index down 5.8% from a year earlier.
The result suggests that recent price momentum was widespread but uneven. It also shows why a single latest-quarter figure can be misleading. Varna's stronger three-year result and Burgas's stronger latest annual result are both correct; they answer different questions.
Price momentum is not the same as market breadth
Transaction activity produces a markedly different ordering. Plovdiv's transaction count was almost unchanged from a year earlier, down 0.6%, while aggregate transaction value increased 2.4%. It was the only one of the six cities with positive transaction-value growth in the latest comparison.
Burgas and Varna, despite strong price histories, recorded much sharper falls in transaction count, at 30.5% and 27.6% respectively. Their aggregate transaction values also declined, although by less than their transaction counts. That pattern is consistent with a higher-value mix among the transactions that did complete, but the aggregate data cannot tell us whether the explanation was property size, quality, location or price.
Sofia sits between these cases: annual HPI growth remained strong, while transaction count and value both declined. The market signal is therefore one of price resilience without equally broad transaction participation.
What deserves closer investigation?
- Varna: whether strong multi-year price growth can be reconciled with the latest contraction in transaction activity.
- Plovdiv: whether relative transaction resilience continues and which local segments account for it.
- Burgas: whether recent price strength persists as transaction participation weakens.
- Ruse: whether the latest annual HPI decline is temporary, compositional or part of a more persistent change.
Source: Bulgarian National Statistical Institute. City HPI and transaction indicators cover Burgas, Plovdiv, Ruse, Sofia, Stara Zagora and Varna. Latest observations may be preliminary.
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