Foreigners pass up on home purchases in Turkey due to extraordinary bureaucracy
Posted by meb at July 19th, 2009
The process involved in sale of homes to foreigners in Turkey is still full of problems for all sides. Various bureaucratic barriers and security investigations that take a long time are turning out to be quite expensive for Turkey in the end.
In Antalya alone, the spot in Turkey that sees the most real estate sold to foreigners, there are 2.5 billion euros of sales that are blocked annually for various reasons. The fact that permission often takes six months to come from the Aegean Army Command headquarters means that many foreigners simply give up on their plans to buy homes in the end. According to information provided by sector representatives, around seven out of 10 sales wind up being cancelled due to these factors. It appears that the wounds have still not healed from the experience of having the Turkish Constitutional Court render decisions on two different occasions to cancel permission for the sales of homes to foreigners. Now real estate agents are calling for the bureaucratic barriers blocking the sales of homes to foreigners in Turkey to be finally lifted, with hopes that this will help enliven the housing sales sector.
The president of the Antalya Chamber of Real Estate Agents, Şeref Sağlam, is calling for the process of home sales to foreigners to be cut back to 15 days, as it is in Spain. “Those who want to invest in real estate are fully within their rights. But bureaucracy is preventing this from happening,” Sağlam said. The general manager of the Ekşioğlu Construction Group, Atilla Aksoy, sums up the handicaps being experienced on this matter in Turkey: “Never mind six months, there are some foreigners who don’t get deeds for one year. People come and look at the properties. They are maybe even planning on buying three or four villas. But when they find out it will take up to six months to get the deeds, they pass up on their plans.”
The head of the Antalya Chamber of Trade and Industry’s (ATSO) Construction Commission, Faruk Sayın, says that putting more authority into the hands of fewer officials would increase the sales of homes to foreigners. Noting that when foreigners buy homes in Turkey, it also works to bring about a steady flow of tourism, Sayın suggests this solution for security worries: “The properties that are not open to being sold to foreigners due to their being military security zones should be explained to the Regional Bureau of Deeds.”
According to data from the General Directorate of Deeds, there are a total of 51,516,170 square meters of real estate belonging to 86,273 foreigners in Turkey. The bulk of real estate in Turkey is bought by Germans, British and Greeks. The most popular places for these real estate purchases are in Muğla and Antalya — coastline spots. Antalya is at the top of the list, with 22,903 homes sold to foreigners there. As for Muğla, there are 10,557 homes belonging to foreigners there and in Istanbul, 8,811.
In sales of homes to foreigners, the sale of a home in the same building to a foreigner does not establish a precedent for a second sale of a home in the same building. In other words, a foreigner buying a second home in a building must go through the same long procedure the second time around. Aksoy notes that this situation makes no sense and calls for this kind of sale to establish a precedent for the foreigner involved.
The general manager of Model Invest, Halil Ocaklı, says that when homes are being sold to foreigners, the necessary permission should be issued at the start of the process. “Firms which are marketing their homes to foreigners should apply for permission at the start of the project, and then we could take these requests to the Aegean Army Command headquarters. They could then examine these requests and issue the necessary permission. Therefore, we will be able to compete with other countries in this matter.”
Thus, it appears that the greatest barriers to the sales of homes to foreigners in Turkey are a number of bureaucratic problems, with some deeds taking as long as six months to be issued, in turn leading to great economic losses for Turkey.
The process involved in buying a home as a foreigner means:
Both the seller and buyer must first apply to the deeds bureau
The deeds bureau then writes a letter to the garrison commander
The garrison commander then sends this letter to the Aegean Army headquarters to be inspected for safety
The Aegean Army headquarters then officially queries whether the property in question lies within the garrison’s military region or a historical region
After it has completed its research, the garrison headquarters send its final report to the Aegean Army headquarters
If the sale is approved, the Aegean Army headquarters sends its documents to the garrison headquarters
The garrison headquarters then sends its written permission to the deeds bureau for the sale to go ahead.
The top 5 countries whose citizens buy homes in Turkey
Country No of people No of homes
Germany 18.571 21.887
England 24.829 17.306
Ireland 5.848 4.364
Denmark 5.008 3.933
Netherlands 4.668 3.721
source: Sunday’s Zaman
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