Turkish opposition proposes to ban the sale of real estate to foreigners

The leader of Turkey’s right-wing opposition Good Party (İyi Parti), Meral Akşener, during an inspection in the earthquake-hit province of Hatay called for a ban on the sale of land and real estate to foreigners, T24 reported.

As the newspaper notes, the need to find housing affected by tremors revealed the problem of rising rents, housing prices and record sales of real estate to foreigners. As follows from the response of the Minister for the Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Murata Kuruma at the request of an MP from the opposition Republican People’s Party Sevdy Erdan Kilich, in 2022, a total of more than 75 thousand properties were sold to foreigners, which is 13% more compared to the previous year. Of these, 70.8 thousand were residential buildings and offices, and 4 thousand were plots of land, including vineyards.

It is noted that last year, citizens of 159 countries bought real estate. At the same time, Russians bought the most – 17,143 objects. Then come the citizens of Iran (9023), Iraq (6409), Germany (3211) and Ukraine (2593).

From the data of the Turkish Statistics Institute, which was studied by RBC, it follows that in 2022, Russian citizens bought three times more real estate in the republic than in 2021, when they purchased almost 5.4 thousand lots. In general, in terms of the number of transactions, 2022 exceeded the results of the last six years combined: from 2016 to 2021, Russians bought 16.2 thousand houses in Turkey.

According to Russian real estate experts, Russians buy housing in Turkey for their own residence and for renting out. But the main reasons for the increase in demand for Turkish real estate experts call the possibility of obtaining a residence permit (residence permit) or Turkish citizenship.