The highs and lows of buying Property in Turkey

At first I was feeling apprehensive; will we find our dream house? Are we doing the right thing, travelling at this time of the year? And if we do find a place, how are we going to ensure we don’t get ripped off? All these questions and more were running through my head as I made my journey down to Gatwick Airport.

Although I had a rough idea of the costs involved when buying property out there, I was still unsure of the whole buying process in Turkey, because the more information you read the more confusing you get and this is what had happened in my case.

We reached early hours of the morning, exhausted from our trip but excited about finally arriving and knowing that soon we will be on our way to finding our dream holiday home…..we had pre arranged a private transfer from the UK with the guy we booked our villa to collect us from Bodrum Airport and take us to our villa which was in Yalikavak.

It was early Sunday morning and everyone was shattered so the first thing we did was crash on our beds to get a few hours of sleep before our first appointment with Serkan from myvillaturkey.com arrived at 11am.

11am sharp a tall middle-aged Turkish looking gentleman stood at the door, as I opened the door he asked for me by name and introduced himself, it wasn’t Serkan from myvillaturkey.com as I had expected, no instead Serkan had got the word around to local estate agents that we were coming and to show us properties that they had on their books (and I guess he would be earning some of the commission if the deal was done). In fact this guy was called Erkan the owner of Yalcin Emlak properties, very friendly and polite he told us that Serkan was in Istanbul and had sent him to show us some properties.

Erkan took us to view our first property on the outskirts of Turgutreis, he knew from the conversation that I had had with Serkan (back in the UK) that we had been interested in buying in Turgutreis, but because of the military restrictions as foreigners’ you would have to form a company with proper accounts and be trading for a year before we could legally own a house in this part of the peninsula. When I queried the area he said the area he was showing us was not part of the restricted zone so we could buy as it was just outside Turgutreis.