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Monday, October 6, 2008

Foreign Ownership Market Trends to 2005


Taken as a whole, during the 69-year period starting in 1934 with the enactment of the Property Law until the first modifications of July 2003, 37342 parcels of property had been acquired by non-Turkish legal entities (companies) or private individuals in Turkey. It is to be noted that 2400 of these were Syrian nationals, who themselves had remained as such but whose properties had become part of the territory of Turkey with the adhesion of the Republic of Hatay to Turkey in 1939, the whole transitional proceedings that took place having been counted, for the purposes of statistics, as re-acquisitions by these Syrians.
The 2-year duration of the validity of the old law (July 2003-July 2005) gave some interesting insights on foreign national property buying trends in Turkey both for property market players and for official bodies.
During the two years for which the July 2003 modification had remained valid, 15842 parcels of property (2931 among these being unbuilt land lots) have been acquired by non-Turkish legal or private persons in Turkey. The purchasers constituted a total of 18959 legal or private owners or co-owners from a total of 58 different countries. In the forefront came British nationals (8625 persons acquiring 6333 parcels), who were followed by Germans (3482 persons for 3210 parcels), with Dutch nationals, Danes, Norwegians, Greeks, Irish nationals, Swedes and Belgians respectively occupying the next places. (Reuters İstanbul - in Turkish)
It was also observed that, during this 2-year period, the districts most favoured by foreign buyers were Alanya, Fethiye, Didim, Bodrum, Kuşadası along the coastline, as well as Ürgüp in Cappadocia. Alanya is a particularly preferred location for Germans and Scandinavians, while the British purchases are at their highest level of concentration in Fethiye and Didim Reuters İstanbul - in Turkish. Some of these towns have come to include sizable proportions of seasonal or full-time inhabitants made up of foreign homeowners. These homeowners already display a marked tendency to set up associations among themselves to promote their specific areas of interests such as the translation of key texts into their respective languages, contacts with officials, cultural and religious activities such as church-building and to provide guidance to newer purchasers (see Expat community web portal in Turkeyor an alternative but comprehensive resource)
One of the fundamental keys to Turkey's successful transition to full EU membership is its ability to attract and retain Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). It has set itself a target of attracting 1.2 trillion dollars from Gulf States initially[citation needed] and therefore the Crown Prince of Dubai's immediate financial commitment to the country's real estate sector not only gave property investors faith in Turkey it gave other nations faith in the country as a whole and should lead to the further promotion of Turkey and an increasing flow of FDI.

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