The largest amount of new residential buildings completed for the third quarter of 2009 was registered in Bulgaria's Black Sea coastal city of Varna, the National Statistics Institute (NSI) said in a media statement on December 3 2009.

Both Varna and Bourgas, the two largest coastal Bulgarian cities, accounted for the first and second place in new construction, with 163 buildings and 1114 flats and 133 buildings and 1460 flats completed respectively. This indicated that although buildings were erected in Varna, more residential units were created in Bourgas.

 Overall, there were 685 new real estate complexes built across Bulgaria for the third quarter of 2009, indicating a 0.9 per cent increase as opposed to the previous three months, according to NSI statistics. A total of 5214 new units were put on the market, or a 674 decline in comparison to the period April-June. These figures indicate that in relation to the corresponding period in 2008, there was 2.1 per cent less construction, but the amount of new flats still managed to increase by two per cent.

According to the report, the average size of new construction indicated that flats built in the third quarter measured 71.7 sq m in area, as opposed to 69.9 sq m in the second quarter. Dnevnik daily, meanwhile, reported on December 3 that while the Black Sea region is still active with new construction, not a single building was completed and put into use in the municipality of Kyustendil for the period July-September 2009.