Some 10,000 rental homes to be built in Istanbul

ISTANBUL

Preparations are in the final stage to launch a project that is designed to address the growing housing problem in Istanbul by developing 10,000 rental homes.

The Real Estate Investors Association (GYODER) in July first floated the idea of devising a new model to increase home supply in the country’s largest city.

The model foresees the development of houses by private companies only to be rented on public lands. This way, it is hoped that land costs will be eliminated and rents will decline by 50 percent.

Banks and the real estate sector are ready to launch the new model, said Mehmet Kalyoncu, the president of GYODER, speaking on the sidelines of the Real Estate Summit, organized by the association.

“We had expected that the public sector would allocate the land for the project, but a private company came forward and offered land. We are waiting for the approval of this company’s board,” Kalyoncu added.

Under this project, which will also support the urban transformation efforts in Istanbul, up to 10,000 homes would be built, he noted.

Tenants and homeowners, who presently live in the areas at risk, will have the priority to move into those residential properties once they are built, according to Kalyoncu.

Accessing affordable housing has become a huge problem for millions of people across Türkiye, but this is particularly true for the residents of the mega city.

Homeownership has declined, and the number of tenants has increased as house prices have become prohibitively high.

This situation impacts the low- and middle-income groups. GYODER proposed a new rental model this summer to address this growing problem.

Recent numbers provided by Endeksa, which collects data on the real estate market, showed that rents in Türkiye soared 136 percent as of the end of the third quarter compared with the same period of last year.

The annual increase in home prices was 109 percent, according to the data. The average rental price was 125 Turkish Lira ($4.4) per square meter.

In Istanbul, the average rent was 18,029 liras, while it was 16,574 liras in the popular holiday destination Antalya and 18,726 liras in Muğla, which is home to several resort towns.

Home prices, on the other hand, leaped 93 percent in Istanbul from a year ago to 34,856/square meter. In Antalya, the year-on-year increase was 100 percent to 32,258/square meter, according to the Endeksa data.