Turkey opens its large real estate market to the world

ANKARA

Citizens of 183 countries are allowed to acquire fixed property, buildings and land in Turkey, Environment and Urban Planning Minister Erdoğan Bayraktar said yesterday, adding that new regulations lift the reciprocity principal for foreign citizens to acquire real estate in the country.

A law easing property sales to foreigners was approved by Parliament in early May, but such transactions have come to a halt since May 18, while awaiting a Cabinet decision on the list of eligible countries, Bayraktar said. A decree including a list of those countries whose citizens are eligible to acquire property in Turkey was released on Aug. 6, opening the way for property sales to foreigners to begin again.

“I believe sale transaction have re-started in the last two days. We have received news from every [place in the country regarding the issue],” Bayraktar said.

Syrian citizens are subject to private permissions in order to purchase property in Turkey, the decree said, daily Hürriyet reported yesterday.

Regulations on real estate sales

to foreigners are now in line with European Union legislation, Bayraktar said.

The amount of property owned by foreigners in a given district cannot exceed 10 percent of the privately owned real estate in that district, and the total amount of real property that a foreigner can own is 300,000 square meters in all of Turkey.

More than 90.7 million square meters of fixed property in Turkey have been sold to foreigners to date, Hürriyet said. Some 86 percent of those sales have taken place in the last 10 years. Foreigners own about 98,000 fixed properties. The highest number of properties owned by foreigners is in the central province of Konya.