Are there any advantages to buying off-plan as opposed to completed proerties? Or does this depend on which country you are looking to invest in (I'm looking at Bulgaria).

More risk with off plan obviously because you have no finished product yet.
If successful development can make more profit as price could go up by the time you come to take possession
Would be very careful with any off plan in bulgaria at the moment,country is supposed to be full of new builds ,you would imagine you could take your pick at a good price

Of course buying off-plan is not a secure option comared to buyin finished The biggest advantage is that the off-plan property is significantly cheaper. You can check developer's reliability and sleep well

Think carefully about Bulgaria - far too many properties. Apparently renting them out is hard now so in a few years' time it will be a nightmare - never mind selling. There are other markets that make more sense than Bulgaria.

Well, once upon a time, I would have said that the lower cost of off-plan was worth the risk, as long as you did your homework. But I've changed my mind, based on the postings I've read on this forum from Spanish, Dubai and Bulgaria owners. Now, this may be because forums like this one will naturally attract a disproportionate number of posts about problems, rather than successful purchases.

I can see a pattern emerging: Somewhere begins to become popular and for a while, all the postings are positive. Then after about 6-9 months, all the problems begin to appear - 90% related to off-plan. Then about the same period later, the whole location becomes unfashionable.

So in the early stages, there's a lot of "I'd recommend you go to X rather than Y, where there are a lot of problems with oversupply, delays, etc." Then 'Y' itself becomes 'X'. And so on.

In the early days of the C4 Forum it was "The Spanish market is overheating and there are reports about dodgey planning permissions - Take a look at Bulgaria." Now it's "Steer clear of Bulgaria, take a look at this weeks Sunday Times - no Morocco is the place to buy into."

The common thread in this is the media. Once the media start reporting widely about a place being a good location, then it almost seems to be the Kiss of Death for off-plan buyers. People start to pile-in and seem to get stuck having made big deposits for properties which aren't that great, or which they can't sell-on.

So my advice would be to always take a look at resale purchase as well as off-plan.

For example ...

I never understood why people decided to go for off-plan/build so quickly when there were often good properties already available. Not until I was on a skiing holiday in Switzerland this winter, and sat next to a couple being 'hosted' by a UK 'property' company.

Boy, was he good! We own an apartment in this place, and he almost had me convinced to sell it and buy one of his chalets. Except that he didn't actually have any property. Nor did he as yet have any plots of land either. Nothing he said was untrue, but it was (a) hugely selective and (b) inconsistent.

What he did, subtly, was get the buyer to specify a set of requirements which naturally wouldn't be well-matched by anything already on the market. He wasn't advising them about what was realistic, what might be cheaper, what they could get for their budget, alternatives etc. He was steering them to want the only thing that he could provide, which was a purpose-built chalet. Then he started making the very deficiencies in his proposition reason for closing the sale "There aren't many plots left in the village, and they are going quite fast." i.e. everywhere near to the lifts is built on (of course) and the only new builds are going to be miles away - probably a drive away. So why go for new build? Why not compromise on something with a bit less space but only a walk from the lifts and shops? "There's not much for sale along the lines you want .." i.e. if you specify a 5 bedroom chalet for £300K then (of course) it's going o be miles away from the centre - so why not go for a £300K 4-bed apartment right in the centre with sauna and pool, which is available?

I now appreciate why people aren't objective. If you rely on some UK property company to introduce you to somewhere you're basically going to be steered into off-plan, even if it's not the right choice for you.