Finishing and furnishing a Sofia apartment costs €36,000 to €77,000

Most new builds sell as a bare shell: the advertised price buys screed floors and plastered walls, and nothing else. Here is the itemised budget for turning 65 m² of unfinished space into a furnished home.

13 June 2026 · SofiaHoods cost model, 2026 Sofia contractor and retail pricing

The day you finally get the keys, the apartment echoes. Grey screed underfoot, one wire hanging where the ceiling light should be, a pipe stub where the brochure showed a rain shower. This is the bare shell, the way most new Sofia homes are handed over, and it is the moment the second budget begins. The first budget is written in the notary act. The second has no contract, no ceiling and a talent for growing in the dark.

We put numbers on it. For the most common purchase in the city, a one-bedroom of 60 to 70 square metres, we priced every line a buyer actually pays, from the waterproofing under the bathroom tiles to the curtain rails, at three honest levels of ambition.

The bathroom always wins

Strip the romance off a renovation and what remains is ten invoices. The largest of them, per square metre, belongs to the smallest room: waterproofing, tiles, glass and the plumber’s third visit make the bathroom a €7,000 affair in a normal project and a €25,000 one if you fall in love with stone. Floors and walls follow quietly behind. Every figure below also assumes the developer handed over level screed and straight walls, an assumption Sofia buyers learn to price in.

All figures EUR, labour + materials, 2026 Sofia pricing. Even a new apartment gets expensive when walls are uneven, screed needs leveling or bathroom drainage needs correcting: developer delivery quality is the wildcard.

The kitchen is a decision, the wardrobes are a fact

Furniture showrooms seduce with sofas, but the budget is decided in the kitchen. A ready-made line with freestanding appliances can stay near €4,000; custom cabinetry, a stone countertop and integrated appliances cross €15,000 without ever feeling extravagant. Wardrobes are the opposite kind of number. Nobody dreams about them, every hallway demands them, and built-in storage routinely ends up costing more than the bed, the mattress and the sofa put together.

For an investor the same table reads differently. Durable flooring, washable paint, reliable appliances, enough storage and a kitchen that survives two tenants are the items that keep paying. The bargain choices are the ones that come back as a second invoice.

The lines that appear in no visualisation

Then come the rows nobody photographs. Delivery trucks that charge extra for a third floor without an elevator. Assembly, by the hour. The designer you were sure you could do without, hired at 11 p.m. after the third tile decision. Together they add €3,600–10,200 to a lean project and €12,300–26,600 to a standard one. The contingency deserves its own sentence: with an apartment bought before Act 16, the 10–15% you set aside is the one line in the file guaranteed to be spent. Power connections arrive late, screed wants leveling, a socket sits exactly where the headboard must go, and materials get dearer between the preliminary contract and the final coat of paint. Lock the bathroom and kitchen budgets early; everything else can wait its turn.

The honest price per square metre

This is why a „cheap“ off-plan €/m² misleads. An unfinished flat advertised at €2,500 a square metre is €162,500 for 65 m². Take it to a good modern standard, add the €46,000–76,700 above, and the move-in figure lands at €208,500–239,200: roughly €3,200–3,700 a square metre, furnished and breathing. On the same arithmetic an investor’s advertised 4.4% gross yield settles near 3.5% effective, before the first tenant rings the new doorbell. The full rent-versus-buy maths, payback years included, lives in the rental-yield analysis.

What the mortgage leaves out

Affordability hides in that gap. A buyer who clears the loan on the unfinished flat can still be short of the cash that makes it livable, because the bank lends against the notary price and leaves the second budget to savings, a consumer loan, family help, or works done one room at a time. The honest way to weigh two listings is to price both as finished. A new-build unfinished unit and a dearer finished resale can change places once you add the months, the works, the furniture and the risk to the cheaper one. The unfinished unit may still win on layout, building and long-term value; just make the call on the finished cost, with the asking price treated as a deposit on the real one.

What the fit-out does to yield

For an investor the finishing budget is capital, and capital sets the return. Buy unfinished and the money at work is the purchase price plus fees plus fit-out plus the empty months while the works run; measured against the purchase price alone, the yield flatters the deal. The same apartment quoted at 4.4% gross can settle near 3.5% effective once the fit-out is counted, and the gap widens the longer the keys sit before a tenant arrives. Premium finishes rarely earn their cost back in rent. The fit-out that pays is durable, neutral and quick to let, the kind a second tenant still finds fresh, and the cheapest materials turn out dearest when they need replacing after one lease.

Walk in with two budgets

So walk into the notary’s office with two budgets. The first is the purchase: price, VAT where it applies, notary, agency, mortgage fees, parking. The second is the move-in: finishing, bathroom, kitchen, appliances, wardrobes, furniture, lighting, air conditioning, delivery, assembly and the 10–15% contingency that always gets spent. If both hold, the purchase is sound. If only the first one holds, the home is still months and tens of thousands away.

Buy, by all means; Sofia’s mortgage maths can still reward the patient. The apartment you are signing for does not exist yet, and the home you are imagining costs tens of thousands more than the listing says.

Press: the full line-item model is available on request via sofiahoods.com. Please credit and link SofiaHoods when citing these figures.