Rent prices in some locations decline amid quake jitters

ISTANBUL

Amid rising earthquake concerns in Türkiye’s largest metropolis Istanbul, people have started migrating from the districts closer to fault lines to more safe locations, as many apartments sit vacant.

Landlords, who are having problems finding new tenants for those houses, which are mostly old structures, have no other solution but to reduce rents.

Bakırköy and Zeytinburnu are such districts. There has been an increase in the number of rental houses or those put up for sale in the local property markets.

Some residents in those two districts evacuated their homes in the wake of the devastating earthquakes that hit 11 provinces in the country’s south in February and left more than 50,000 people dead.

Landlords in those districts lowered rent prices by 10 percent to lure new tenants, but those efforts seem to fail, according to real estate agents.

“People moved out of old apartments. This happened almost in all streets in Bakırköy. Those, who can afford, relocated to safer locations on the Asian side,” said Oğuzhan Okuklu, a real estate agent.

Even though landlords cut rent prices in an effort to lease out their properties, people apparently stay away from the buildings in the risky districts.

More rental houses are on the market compared with the previous months, especially in the districts of Fatih, Zeytinburnu, Esenler and Bağcılar on the European side, Mustafa Hakan Özelmacılıklı told daily Milliyet.

He also confirmed that rent prices declined 10 to 15 percent in those locations.

On a related note, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) said on April 10 that the construction cost index advanced 2.08 percent month-on-month in February, easing from the 15.2 percent increase in January.

The annual increase in the index slowed from 78.5 percent to 72.4 percent.

Labor costs were down 1.2 percent compared with January, while the index for construction materials rose 3.4 percent monthly.