Turkey’s real estate sector to pick up pace
Posted by meb at February 28th, 2008
The real estate sector that went through two elections and foreign crisis in 2007 began this year with great expectations. While January did not live up to expectations, the rest of the year seems to be promising.
Ahmet Rauf Saatçi, regional director of Turkey, Germany and the Balkans at Century 21, a leading chain of real estate agencies both in Turkey and abroad, said Turkey has potential in the real estate sector. Despite this, the transactions in the sector have been worse than expected for the last year and a half. “January is generally a stagnant month; the activity starts from the end of February onward, especially during spring,” added Saatçi, who expects more activity this year.
Saatçi noted that the sector has been revitalized with new construction projects that began at the end of 2007. “There has been an aggravating mortgage turmoil in the United States and European countries along with attempts to lower bank interest rates in order to diminish the effects of this crisis,” said Saatçi. “However, Turkey has not been affected by these events. We have not formed the system yet. I expect more from this year than 2007.” He said that the apparent stagnation is seasonal and that people expected the decrease of the dollar to impact the market as well. “We can see serious rental transactions for the last two months. It may be expected that the mortgage system will be see brisk activity in Turkey after the global fluctuations stop and dollar gains in value. The flux of global funds into the country will also increase this activity,” Saatçi said.
Source: Turkish Daily News
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