Bulgaria's coastline is attracting foreign property investors like bees to honey, wrote Peter Conradi in The Sunday Times. "Old-style communist resorts that were once the summer playground of Russian, Czech and Polish workers are being demolished and replaced by a Balkan version of the Costa del Sol. In scenes familiar from the Spain of the 1970s and 1980s, virgin coast is filling rapidly with apartment blocks and prices are climbing steadily. The price of land, meanwhile, is going through the roof: plots five or 10 miles inland are being snapped up even if the sea views are so distant that you need a telescope."

The article points out that the boom is being driven largely not by people looking for holiday homes for their own use but by investors lured by rock-bottom prices and the hope of rapid returns. Estimates show that despite 40%-50% increases in the past year or so, property remains remarkably cheap by Spanish, let alone British, standards.

In separate news, The Observer adds more examples of Britons who have purchased a second home in the Bulgarian sun. 'It's very unspoilt, the people are nice and the beaches are beautiful,' enthuses 25-year-old Scott Love. Scott is not talking about his home town of Leicester but about Bulgaria - where he and accountant girlfriend Claire Spencer have bought a property after spending two weeks' holiday there.

The couple's EUR 36,000 studio apartment is at the Emerald Beach Resort in Ravda. The development - which has its own private sandy beach - will include pools, restaurants and 800 furnished apartments on its completion in July 2006.