Turyap offers services to expats seeking property in Turkey

Real estate agency Turyap has recently set up an expatriates' department to offer expertise services to foreign citizens who would like to buy homes in Turkey.

"Europeans in particular have been showing keen interest in buying summer residences particularly on Turkey's west coast for the last two to three years and these areas are being intensely developed to meet that demand," Turyap's Ferah Alpay told the Turkish Daily News.

The hot season for the property market in the southwest opens in September until the weather gets warmer. Prices are going up fast in newly-developed places because more and more foreigners are becoming eager to buy property, and have peaked particularly in some of the popular holiday spots such as Marmaris.

Germans, Britons, Danes and Dutch, have homes all along the coastline. Alpay said two recently-popular areas for property development, where prices have yet to go up, were the Akbük district in Didim, Aydın, where she said there were several kilometers-long natural beaches, and the neighborhood of the Gökova Bay in Muğla province.

When it comes to an expatriate buying a property, however, losses may occur amid complex bureaucratic procedures and a market open to speculative price volatility, Alpay said.

She said some people end up buying houses that carry a lot of debt or encumbrances, because they cannot check the notice in the land register and even if they could, they wouldn't understand it because it's in Turkish.

Besides, land available for property development is limited in Turkey's southwest coast by codes about protected areas, forests and historic sites.

Yet some properties may be overriding these rules due to frequent changes in laws or other factors, Alpay said.

"A foreign buyer may not know if his or her house is built in one of the areas protected by law long after he or she buys it," she said.

To address these concerns, Turyap's real estate appraisal unit started a service that is brand new to Turkey and offers, as licensed by Turkey's capital market watchdog, expert reports, in the native language of the buyers.

The reports, prepared in exchange for a fee, of course, include information regarding a certain piece of property ranging from the exact address to the record title, to whether it has any impediments or accumulated utility charges on record, to such details as physical area or the state of tiles in the bathroom.

An estimated price is also included in the report, but it does not vary greatly from the one set by the buyer considering supply and demand factors, according to Alpay.