Blog · Housing affordability
How many years’ salary does a home cost?
“Homes have become unaffordable.” You hear it every day. Listings say one thing, but people don’t buy at listing prices. We did the sums with actual sales and actual wages, city by city, and compared them with Europe. The picture is different from how it sounds.
Data: wages by district, Q2 2026, and house price indices (National Statistical Institute) · prices from actual sales, Q3 2026 (Address Real Estate) · OECD · Eurostat · Deloitte Property Index 2025Gross annual salaries for 70 sq m in Sofia
From actual sales and the average wage in the capital
How much Sofia prices have risen since 2020
Almost exactly as much as wages there
Bulgaria’s price-to-income index, 2025
OECD, 2015 = 100: a home weighs less than ten years ago
Of Bulgarians are overburdened by housing costs
Eurostat, 2025; EU average — 7.6%
How we count
Sales, not listings.
An asking price is what the seller hopes for. A sale is what both sides agreed on. In the third quarter of 2026, 55% of sales in Sofia closed below the original asking price, and 60% in Plovdiv. So we do not use listings here.
Prices are the average price per square metre for a two-room flat in actual sales in the third quarter of 2026, according to Address Real Estate. Wages are the average gross wages for the district in the second quarter of 2026, according to the National Statistical Institute. The home is 70 sq m — the size Deloitte uses in its European comparison, so our figures are comparable.
| City | Price per sq m | 70 sq m | Gross annual salaries | Years of net pay | Years for two earners |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sofia | €2,623 | €183,610 | 7.9 | 10.1 | 5.1 |
| Varna | €2,196 | €153,720 | 9.4 | 12.1 | 6.1 |
| Plovdiv | €1,772 | €124,040 | 8.4 | 10.8 | 5.4 |
| Burgas | €1,665 | €116,550 | 8.3 | 10.7 | 5.3 |
Average gross wages, Q2 2026: Sofia (capital) €1,943, Varna €1,360, Plovdiv €1,228, Burgas €1,175. Net pay is calculated with the employee’s social contributions (13.78%) and 10% income tax, i.e. 77.6% of gross.
Two things stand out. First, it is hardest in Varna, not Sofia. A square metre there is 16% cheaper than in the capital, but wages are 30% lower. Second, for two earners a home costs around 5–6 years of net pay. That is a lot, but it is not “unaffordable”.
What has changed
Have homes become less affordable?
Prices really have jumped. By the statistics institute’s index, which is based on actual sales, homes in Sofia have become 2.1 times more expensive since 2020, and more than 3 times since 2015. But wages have not stood still either. Here are the six cities for which the institute calculates a price index:
| City | Prices since 2020 | Wages since 2020 | Affordability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sofia | ×2.09 | ×2.03 | 3% harder |
| Varna | ×2.17 | ×2.13 | 2% harder |
| Plovdiv | ×1.86 | ×2.02 | 8% easier |
| Burgas | ×1.96 | ×2.07 | 5% easier |
| Stara Zagora | ×1.87 | ×1.98 | 6% easier |
| Ruse | ×1.74 | ×2.08 | 16% easier |
Prices: the National Statistical Institute’s house price index, 2020 average against Q2 2026. Wages: average gross wage by district, 2020 average against Q2 2026. Comparing the averages of the last 12 months instead, to rule out seasonality, gives the same picture: Sofia +3%, Varna +4%, Plovdiv −10%, Ruse −13%.
In other words, since 2020 prices and wages have run at almost the same speed. A home in Sofia today costs roughly as many years of work as six years ago. In Ruse and Plovdiv it costs even fewer.
The OECD says the same. It tracks the ratio between house prices and disposable income per head for every EU country. For Bulgaria the index stood at 95.6 in 2025, against 100 in 2015. So relative to incomes, a home is slightly more affordable than ten years ago. In Portugal the same index is 166.7, in the Netherlands 135.3, in the Czech Republic 128.5.
Against Europe
Where does Sofia stand among European capitals?
Every year Deloitte compares how many gross annual salaries a new 70 sq m home costs in European cities. No Bulgarian cities are included, so we calculated them using the same method. Here are all the capitals Deloitte covers:
| City | Gross annual salaries for 70 sq m |
|---|---|
| Amsterdam | 15.4 |
| Athens | 15.3 |
| Prague | 15.0 |
| Bratislava | 12.3 |
| Ljubljana | 11.7 |
| Budapest | 11.4 |
| London (inner) | 10.8 |
| Belgrade | 9.8 |
| Warsaw | 9.7 |
| Varna (FinHome calculation) | 9.4 |
| Copenhagen | 9.3 |
| Rome | 8.1 |
| Sofia (FinHome calculation) | 7.9 |
| Zagreb | 7.5 |
Deloitte Property Index 2025, 2024 data, mostly asking prices for new homes (for Amsterdam and London — actual sales). Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Madrid are missing because Deloitte only compares cities for which it has both price and wage data. The FinHome calculation uses actual sales, mostly of older homes, and 2026 wages. A new home in Sofia would come out a little more expensive, so the gap with Prague and Budapest is, if anything, smaller than the table shows.
There is one more indicator that shows the real burden. Eurostat measures how many people spend more than 40% of their disposable income on housing — rent, mortgage, bills. In Bulgaria in 2025 it was 6.9%, below the EU average of 7.6%. In Greece it was 26.4%, in Denmark 14.7%, in Germany 11.2%. The reason is not that Bulgarians earn a lot, but that most live in a home they own outright.
Being honest about the sums
So why is it so hard to buy?
Because two things hide inside these averages.
The average wage is not the typical wage. High earners pull it up. Most people earn less than the average, and for them every figure in the tables is higher.
The real barrier is the down payment, not the monthly payment. A bank can lend up to 85% of the price — that is the Bulgarian National Bank’s cap. The remaining 15%, plus taxes and fees, has to come from savings, not from a loan. For 70 sq m in Sofia that is about €27,500 — a year and a half of average net pay, without spending anything. The payment on a loan for the other 85% is about €610 at today’s 2.42% over 30 years. That is 40% of one average net wage in Sofia and 20% of two.
In Varna the payment is 48% of one net wage — very close to the 50% cap the central bank sets. So there a loan on one income is hardest to get, and on two it is well within reach.
Our conclusion is simple. Homes have not become less affordable relative to wages — they have risen together with them. The hard part is saving the initial sum, and that is much easier with two incomes.
- National Statistical Institute — average gross monthly wage by district, to June 2026, and house price indices for the six largest cities, to Q2 2026 (in Bulgarian)
- Address Real Estate — the housing market in Q3 2026, via Investor.bg — prices per sq m in actual sales and the share of discounted sales (in Bulgarian)
- OECD — house price to income ratio
- Eurostat — housing cost overburden rate (ilc_lvho07a), 2025
- Deloitte Property Index 2025 — gross annual salaries for a new 70 sq m home
- ECB — rates on new housing loans in Bulgaria, August 2026 (MIR); Bulgarian National Bank — requirements for housing loans from 1 October 2024
This article is for information only and is not financial advice. The 2020 price was not measured separately — affordability is compared through the change in the statistics institute’s index and in wages.
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