Within a month, the company, one of Sofia’s largest residential developers, will launch the Ivory project – its first residential building in Warsaw. In addition, BLD is finalising the purchase of a plot of land for a second development and is negotiating the purchase of a third. ‘We want to build an independent local structure – with local employees, suppliers, builders, working with credit from a local bank and selling to local customers. We want to apply, as much as possible, our best construction practices from Bulgaria and borrow experience from Poland,’ – Ivaylo Mishev, BLD’s country manager for Poland and director for Central and Eastern Europe, said.

Plans are for the Polish company to reach a scale of 150-200 flats per year in the medium term, as it is currently building in Bulgaria. ‘In Poland this requires capital at least twice as much as in our country, and in Bulgaria the profit margin is currently much higher. The Polish market is developed almost as much as the German one, competition is strong and extraordinary profits are almost impossible,’ – Mishev explains.

BLD, which is part of Bulgaria’s largest real estate group AG Capital, has built 11 buildings with 1,500 flats over the past 10 years. It currently has six more buildings under construction in Sofia – Mona 3, Mona 4 and Mona 5 in Manastirski Livadi. It is working on the large Uptown Square complex in Hladilnika. It is finishing houses in the Slow Life estate in Vladaia and is working on the Aviva building – opposite Vazrazhdane Park. The company has been preparing to expand in Poland for about three years. For more than a year they have been choosing a market to invest in from five or six European countries to the west and north of Bulgaria – Spain, Germany, the UK and Poland. The aim was to have markets that were larger and more developed than Bulgaria’s and sufficiently attractive to the international investment community. In early 2023. BLD opened an office in Warsaw and started to build its organisational structure and team.