mytapu.com - Articles #Foreign Buyers

Do you Trust & Believe what agents say?

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 02:31:00 +0300

Turks don’t - why would you ?

The data for this visualization comes from the Pew Research Center. It is based on nationally representative surveys of more than 37,000 adults conducted in early 2025.

In Turkiye, 84% of adults do not trust other people, the highest rank if distrust among nations, according to a survey by Pew Research. (Note: the distrust is likely as high, or higher in other nations, not surveyed.) Yes, we may conclude this reflects a specific bias that is endemic to the culture, There are no penalties for lying- so why not ? There are no penalties for lying in most countries, either, so perhaps the habit is more common and widespread in Turkiye.

Perhaps it comes as no surprise that the distrust of real estate agents is so high that local Turks will not use them, and avoid them however possible. True, there are ethical professionals in the sector, but a foreign investor will never find them by using an English or Arabic search enquiry, because their websites are in Turkish ! Note that the practice of lying by English and Arabic speaking real estate agents is even more so. Lying is key to the manipulation that is central to their business process.

However, in fairness to Turks, it should be pointed out that the extreme extent of lying and manipulation by English speaking agents in Turkiye was begun years ago by local English and Irish agents selling Turkish properties to their fellow country men. Over the years this resulted in litigation in the UK and Ireland. The result ? These undesirable practitioners continued their activities by moving their business permanently to Turkiye, where consumer protection and fraud laws were easier to circumvent.

Several of these characters continue their businesses to today. Their real estate agency businesses appear in the top internet search engine rankings in English or Arabic. They ‘dress-up’ a little differently now, pretending to be professional trustworthy, caring, etc - but their core business practice remains unchanged.

Read more about how and why mis-leading information is everywhere,,, and why independent professional advice is essential… click here.

Additional Reading- Articles and Web Pages...

The Secret to Successful Property Investing in Turkey

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 07:01:00 +0300

Buying a property in Turkiye almost certainly guarantees the dream of enjoying a happier and healthier lifestyle, but to achieve success, requires the secret know-how to prevent that dream from becoming an investor’s nightmare…

How to Buy... What are the First Steps...?

Ask this question in a google search, and the answers are all mostly the same. One of the key steps is ‘ find an agent’ . Of course that is because agents write the articles. In fact, local Turks have not used agents to find property for ten years or more. Those articles are only read by unknowing non-Turkish people making their google searches in English. Such articles written in English, Russian or Arabic by agents are simply guiding unsuspecting non-Turkish speaking buyers down a path to follow procedures that enable agents to manipulate the property purchase procedures for their benefit, at the expense of the investor.

Ok, but how can a property purchase be done safely and securely, avoiding these regrettable circumstances ?

MyTapu has the answer...

Buy Like a Local

Ok, but how can a property purchase be done safely and securely, avoiding these regrettable circumstances ?

The real answer is to follow the same steps local Turkish buyers use. Asking an agent is not one of the steps. This is because agents have such a bad reputation in Turkey, that local buyers stopped using agents as soon as an alternative became available. more than ten years ago, with the introduction of on-line market places called ‘portals’ where property owners can communicate directly with buyers via on-portal messaging.

Many agents try to mislead naieve buyers into believing their own websites are portals- but none of those simple websites provide a buyer with direct messaging access to the owners. No, instead, agents put themselves in the communication between buyer and seller, and that is where the problems begin, which is how agents make their money. This is a lot more money than the 2-3% agents charge in commission.

English speaking agents are taking more than just commission – they typically enter an agreement with the owner to sell the property and pay the owner a fixed set price, and whatever higher price the agent sells for, the agent keeps. This additional ‘price mark-up’ is a ‘hidden profit’ for the agent, most often ranging from 20% to 40% (the highest seen is 60% !). So if a buyer receives a 10% discount from the agent, most often this is still 10% or more above the market price of the property the seller receives !.

Understanding this important reality is essential for investors wishing to avoid over paying, and expecting real investment returns. Ideally, a buying investor wants to know all the expenses and costs being charged at the beginning, and before committing and paying anything. This solution is available to investors by using the fee-based services provided by MyTapu Associates - without commissions nor 'hidden price mark-ups.

The Three Most Important Steps for Buying Property in Turkey

The summary of the real steps for safely buying property in Turkey are following the steps and buying the same way local Turks buy… ‘buying like a local’. This procedure covers the three most important aspects of buying a property in Turkey, at the beginning of the process:

1) Finding the Property

2) Checking the Sales Price with Market Prices

3) Checking the Property’s Permits and Cadastral details

These three are done during the early stages of finding a suitable property for purchase, and before visiting for a viewing. An unsuspecting buyer will be misled by agents into waiting to check price and permit documents until after paying a reservation deposit (never do it !).

How Does a Buyer Make the Best Possible Investment ?

If an investor ventures to manage these on his own, it can be nearly impossible without knowledge of the Turkish language, but help and guidance is available from mytapu with support services showing a buyer ‘how to’ use the portals to find a property meeting the buyers priorities and criteria. The Property Finder’s Service opens up for the buyer the entire market of properties available for sale in Turkey. All without an agent, and without being limited to only those properties an agent has positioned for selling at the maximum hidden profit.

Alternatively, a buyer may prefer to have someone else do this work; someone that can do it faster and more easily because of having years of experience – and for these investors mytapu provides The Property Search and Selection Service, designating an experienced property analyst and transaction expert to work on the buyer’s instructions. .

Both services provide the property buyer with the benefits of seeing all the property on the market of the type the buyer is looking for. In addition, both services enable the buyer to obtain professional market intelligence on prices, and professional assessment of the permits and cadastral circumstances for properties.

It is important to note that success is most often determined by the way in which the price and permit checks are integrated into the negotiations with the seller, and ensuring this information is checked before incurring expenses and time visiting the property. For this reason, appointing experts to these tasks with instructions is essential, and can be done with both services.

However, only the Property Search and Selection Service provides the buyer with the experts’ directly managed coordination of these aspects, which is crucially important. because the seller or the seller’s agent is most often, constantly striving to put the buyer in a position of not having these aspects checked without first making an advance payment deposit – which they always assure is refundable, but never is without the expenses incurred by going to court.

MyTapu's Professional Advisory Services are designed and used by professional investors for many years now, and suitable for private individuals that are seasoned investors with property portfolios in more than one country. Please click here for a closer look at these services and investment considerations.

Let’s look at each of these three aspects in a little more detail…

1) Finding the Property

2) Checking the Sales Price

3) Legal Checks & Due Diligence

Negotiation

During the process of having the above mentioned price and legal risks checked and clarified, the seller and buyer will be in discussion (unless the seller has granted a power of attorney, and if an agent does not have one, the agent is not authorised) , and this is the natural way for the negotiations to proceed – unlike the way agents guide buyers, to negotiate price first and apply pressure for the payment of a reservation deposit or other advance payment, before the risks are checked !

And for the reasons explained at the beginning of this article, describing agents’ ‘hidden profit and price mark-ups’, a buyer that is foolish enough to rely on an agents’ assurances about the existence of these risks, is foolish enough to pay 20-40% more than the market price for a property. The alternative- Independent Professional Advice – is essential, and is provided by the MyTapu services mentioned in this article, above.

Knowledge is the Key

Knowledge is THE most important ingredient of successful investing - essential. For this reason the best next step the reader should take is to become 'fully informed'. At mytapu, our policy is to ensure investors are fully informed so that they may make fully informed decisions, there-by ensuring successful outcomes for everyone.

How to Become Fully Informed ?

Read all the articles by follow all the links in this article and below - take advantage of the full information resources on this website.

For clarity and professional guidance, mytapu provides independent professional advice as fee based services, which are priced at a very small fraction of the economic value resulting from cost savings and preventing investment losses. Using these services also reduces uncertainty, stress and are also safer, more secure, faster and provide better results.

The Secret Revealed...

This is the Secret to buying a successful property investment in Turkey. It is a secret a buyer will not read about anywhere else on the English language internet, for the simple reason that all the articles about buying property in Turkey are published on the internet by agents’ and they do not want to reveal their ‘secret’ hidden price & profit mark-ups’. That is why those articles published by agents guide unsuspecting buyers down a misleading path by describing an alternative set of procedures that local Turks never follow. Buyer’s will benefit from protecting their capital and peace of mind, and ‘buying like a local’… otherwise buying into the dream of a better life-style will become a nightmare….

Get Started Now

Additional Reading- Articles and Web Pages...

As Miami Crests, Istanbul Rises; Changing Tides Share a Common Breakwater…

Sun, 02 Dec 2018 20:13:43 +0300

How’s the property market doing? Investors' intuition and instincts are telling them one thing, but the news and statistics are saying something else... For real estate investors experiencing this dilemma, these charts tell why….

This market boom is not like the last one, in the most important way; sales volumes are averaging lower prices, and less profit margin. It has been a good time to be invested in real estate, but not as good as previous cycles. A comparison of two distinctly different real estate markets, Miami and Istanbul, reveals both share this common ailment. The similarities are relevant- the better market conditions of the last five years have not been at price levels or profit margins of the previous up-turn.

When it comes to comparing investment viability across different residential real estate markets, no where does the sun shine brighter than Miami. The present cycle is now stretching out so long that one might be forgiven for mistakenly believing this uptrend is structural. Alas, the signs of an imminent cyclical downturn are becoming more frequent, as the crest of the wave…

Miami, having done so well for the last ten years, hasn’t experienced a notable pull back to buy into. Considering all key ingredients of a stellar residential real estate investment, Miami has them in spades, beating all the rest, Hong Kong and Singapore not withstanding. This leading global market performance during the present economic cycle, benefiting from having long been a key attractor as the cultural capital of Latin American diaspora, the present small down tick in foreign buying, is notable.

Istanbul on the other hand, is a comparative new comer on the radar screen of international residential real estate investors. Briefly an out-performer of its peers, suddenly fallen sharply with a weak currency impacted by strong Dollar and upward global interest rates, is now struggling with resurgence. Much mooted citizenship investment stimuli, recently produced a small but sharp up-tick of inward foreign investment, likely to continue for sometime, like Miami, driven by cultural priorities of investors- a favourable factor for sustainability and duration of the trend. The Istanbul market is benefiting from positioning as the cultural capital of Islam, with more than 500 years historical context. New Citizenship Investment regulations have reduced the minimum amount of property purchase required, to $250,000. In October, 36 percent of total sales, just over 2,200 units, were to foreign investors.

In Miami, the statistics show foreign home buyers are disappearing. For the year ending July 2018, foreign buyers purchased about $23 billion of South Florida real estate, down 5% from the previous year, at 19% of existing home sales versus 21%, previously. The share of foreign buying in South Florida nearly doubles the US national average of 10%. Canadians and Brazilians bought the most, 52,000 properties, a decrease of 15%; Latin American and Caribbean buyers together amounted to 36%, Canadians 22%, Europeans 19%, and Asians 11%. A strong dollar, higher global interest rates, and declining local currencies have virtually eliminated buying from Mexicans, Argentineans, and Venezuelans. The decline in sales is particularly notable in the million dollar segment.

In Turkey, official statistics of property purchases by foreigners in October showed that Iraqis topped the list with 1,439 units, followed by Iranians with 557, Kuwaitis with 378, Germans with 341, and Russians with 336; whilst the largest segments of foreign buying in the previous cycles from, British, and Swedes increased from virtually non-existent levels by 131 percent, and 137 percent, respectively, directly correlated to the recovery in tourism this summer. For the record, the official prognosis in Turkey, is …’ we may sell 40,000 units to foreigners in 2018, this is a historic record for our country." Such optimism is remarkable, considering the influx of foreign residential ownership for the first five years of the previous boom totalled some 50,000. And those 50,000 were primarily to northern Europeans, sales at significantly higher prices and larger profit margins. Perhaps in the context of ebullient enthusiasm, it’s worth remembering, that similarly optimistic forecasts of the return of Russian buying in 2017, amounted in the end, to a mere total of $ 1 million….

The current outlook in both Miami and Istanbul has now pivoted sharply, each in different directions. Developers in Miami are halting new construction, as properties, such as Miami Beach’s Sunset Island II, are lingering on the market for more than six months. Instead of selling in one month, on a first visit, the buyers are more cautious, visiting three or four times. In Istanbul, developers are now rejoicing at having buyers return, whilst competing to sell un-moved inventory.

Reflecting the US situation in a global context, with Istanbul as an example, is relevant because the US market directly influences global interest rates, and thus global real estate markets. In September, Bank of America signalled the peak of the US housing market, citing declining affordability, greater price reductions, and deteriorating housing sentiment. The effects are impacting real estate markets globally. Three month Libor interest rates, the benchmark for more than $ 30 trillion of global borrowing, mortgages included, is in a sustained uptrend.

The significant insight, is that markets are peaking at the end of the current cycle, without having attained the pricing or profitability of the previous cycle. This is the reason why residential investors intuition is not corresponding with the news, because investment returns are not matching up to those enjoyed near the peak of the previous cycle, nor to the bullish press-releases of the real estate media.

Evidently, as is plain to see in the charts above; each new financial bail-out by Central Banks, has a diminishing impact on economic activity and wealth creation.

Special Thanks for Graphics, to Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com…

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At mytapu.com our policy is to ensure our clients are fully informed, so that they may make fully informed decisions- this helps to ensure better outcomes all around.

Suggested Reading:

Residential Property Investors Tool-Kit for Turkey

Property Finders Service Istanbul and Coastal Turkey,

Citizenship Investment in Turkey

Due Diligence

Conveyancing

The One Source for Every Turkish Mortgage

Legal Services for Property Matters in Turkey

Advice for Property Matters in Turkey
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