Sofia is rapidly shedding its reputation as an inexpensive European capital, with housing prices rising sharply over the past decade and the average price of completed home purchases reaching €2,680 per square meter in the first quarter of 2026.
The latest figure represents an increase of nearly 29% over a year. At the beginning of 2025, the average price of homes actually purchased in Sofia was about €2,080 per square meter. By the end of the year, it had climbed to €2,790 before easing slightly to €2,680 in the first quarter of 2026.
The average final purchase price for a home in the capital has now reached €217,500, putting home ownership increasingly out of reach for many households and making long-term mortgage financing a necessity for a growing number of buyers.
Sofia's current prices are beginning to approach those in other major cities in the region, although direct comparisons must be treated carefully because the data are calculated differently. Deutsche Bank's Mapping the World's Prices 2026 study, based on Numbeo data and converted into euros using average European Central Bank exchange rates for the first half of 2026, puts the price of housing in central Athens at €3,442 per square meter and in Istanbul at €2,646.
