‘Daily rental pushing up rents in Istanbul's housing market’

ISTANBUL

Rents in Istanbul have been on the rise for some time due to several factors, but according to experts, daily rental apps might be a factor that is contributing to the housing problems in Türkiye’s largest city.

Strong demand from foreigners and students appears to be the main reason behind the soaring rents, which, according to one data, skyrocketed 145 percent in Istanbul over the past year.

‘Number of rooms offered on apps rise’

Some landlords, who seek larger financial gains, choose to rent their properties on apps. The number of rooms put up for daily rental in the megacity tripled in the past four years.

“Daily rental is a reason behind the surge in rent prices,” said Nilüfer Kas, a real estate expert. In 2018, 13,000 rooms were offered for daily rental on a popular app, but this figure jumped to 22,000 in 2021 and rose to more than 40,000 in the final quarter of 2022, Kas added.

“Those numbers are only for daily rental via the app. But the real figure could be around 100,000,” she said.

Facing high rent costs, tenants are also resorting to subletting in the crowded districts of the city. In Sarıyer, where the average monthly rent is 28,000 Turkish Liras ($1,500), the daily rental price could go up to 2,000 liras, whereas it is around 1,500 in the Beşiktaş district.

Real estate agents push for daily rentals

Real estate agents also join the game, pursuing landlords to go with a daily rental, telling them it is a much more lucrative business.

Thousands of properties are offered for daily and hourly rental via different applications, said Hakan Akdoğan, the president of TÜGEM, an association for real estate consultants.

“Insufficient supply of houses, high property prices, rising construction costs…all of those factors are pushing up rents,” he said.

Akdoğan noted that Russians and Ukrainians, who flee their counties because of the war, are renting houses in Istanbul and the southern province of Antalya. “They rent houses for short-term but at higher prices, and some of them pay the one year’s rent in cash. So, high rents have become normal for landlords, he said.