Turkey’s real estates market is shaken by a new regulation that came into effect in August 2021.
Since March 2019, foreign nationals who buy or sell real estate in Turkey are required to get a certified surveyor to write an expert report on the real estate. This expert report is one of the documents required by the land registry to approve the transaction of real estate ownership. Up until recently, buyers and sellers could freely appoint the surveyor to issue the mandatory expert report and assessment of the real estate.
However, there have been recent rumors on irregularities on some expert reports, especially concerning the assessments of real estates in “Turkish citizenship applications” and conflicts of interest on the surveyors’ part. Due to these rumors, the government has passed a new regulation on expert reports. The new regulation dictates that, instead of freely appointing the surveyor, sellers are now required to apply online, using their e-devlet password, for a random surveyor to be appointed to the real estate to be sold. In turn, the government appoints a random surveyor from a pool of surveyors to the said real estate. The surveyor then gets in touch with the seller, visits the real estate and issues the expert report in a specific number of days.
The new regulation has caused both lots of inconvenience for the involved parties and longer periods for real estate transactions to be finalized. The reason is that, in this new order, buyers and sellers are no longer customers to the surveyors but merely government-appointed clients. Since the main reason behind the new regulation was concerns on the objectivity and the impartiality of the surveyors, it can be said that the goal of easing these concerns has been achieved. However, the cost of this achievement is that, it has brought real estate transactions involving foreign parties to a virtual halt. This temporary adaptation period is certainly going to prove to be a challenge for all parties involved in real estate purchases in Turkey.
Antalya real estate attorney and Antalya property lawyer Baris Erkan Celebi assists their clients to conveniently and securely purchase real estates in Turkey by accompanying the whole transaction process.
