Buyers Guide

You can have detailed information about the things to consider when buying a house in our Real Estate Buyers Guide.

Turkish Properties has been developed to help you buy the perfect apartment in Istanbul. Finding an apartment in a city as wide and diverse as Istanbul is often considered a complicated process; However, with the right guidance and knowledge, you will find that the process is not as difficult as some would like you to believe. We aimed to simplify the process as much as possible by combining our enormous amount of unique content with the knowledge and expertise of the best real estate agents in Istanbul.

We found that the best way to find an apartment in Istanbul is with the help of an experienced real estate agent. We recommend using a real estate agent if you are serious about finding an apartment, as the market moves very quickly and access to most of the most desired apartments is controlled by agents.

Turkish Properties has partnered with some of the largest real estate agencies in Istanbul to gain access to some of the best apartments in Istanbul. By using these services, you will be able to access apartments that you would not have seen otherwise.

Know what you want

Istanbul City offers some of the most diverse housing options anywhere; As a result, you have many excellent options. Therefore, it is important to focus on some features to make your search as efficient as possible. Some of the key items you need to resolve early are:

Your Budget

For obvious reasons, this is probably the most important factor. The price of an apartment depends on several factors. Therefore, it is important to determine your budget at the beginning, such as size, location, building type, conditions and features.

Areas of interest

Beşiktaş has dozens of neighborhoods, each with a unique taste and personality. A number of factors can affect where you live: you may want to be close to work or your child’s schools; maybe it is important to be close to a park; perhaps it is very important to be close to great restaurants and cafes. The good news is that Istanbul offers something for everyone.

Apartment Size and Properties

Need a one-bedroom apartment? A large living space? A maid’s room or home office? Are beautiful landscapes important? When determining which features are important, remember that there is a price for each, and therefore prioritize them based on how much you want to pay for each.

Building Type and Properties

The last major item to solve is what kind of building you want to buy. First you need to decide whether you prefer a cooperative or a condo. Then, the porter, concierge, prewar, high nativity, pet policy, health club / pool, etc. Determine the importance of such features. To help you, we have created more than 200 cooperative and condo profiles, including almost every condominium. every cooperative in the city, Bebek, Arnavutköy, Etiler, Ulus, Rumelihisarı, Tarabya, İstinye, Yeniköy.

Need to know

A buyer in Istanbul has three basic options. Whether to buy a property: condominium building, cooperative building or town house / sandstone. Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages, and the choice is always a matter of personal preference. We asked our experienced staff to come up with a list of pros and cons about each one. Here’s what they have to say.

Apartment

In an apartment it has a receiving apartment and a percentage of the common areas of the building. The immovable passes to the title deed registered in the land registry. If you intend to borrow money to buy the flat, you will sign a mortgage to be registered with the real estate registry office. Once you buy an apartment in an apartment, there is an association you belong to. The association provides services such as general maintenance to common areas for a monthly fee. Since it is immovable, you will pay your property taxes separately or with your mortgage payments. In general, your lender will assist you in this area. Closing costs are higher than cooperatives because a condo is a real estate. Whether you own a cooperative or an apartment, you may need to make evaluations for major repairs or renovations.

Advantages Disadvantages

  • Easier approval process
  • The real estate you own gives you more rights, so you can transfer, re-buy or sell the bond to family members.
  • Greater control over building maintenance and development
  • Lower monthly overheads
  • Typically higher purchase price per square meter
  • Typically higher purchase price per square meter…

Townhouses

Town houses do not have 2-5-story buildings, usually historical houses. Townhouses tend to be simpler with smaller living spaces (be careful, as terms are often used interchangeably). Such buildings are traditionally occupied by families or well-established people who prefer a more private and comfortable living environment. Actual buildings can range from narrow and low-rise two-tiered houses to large pieces, large houses that can have a living area of up to 1000 square meters if not divided into units. Similarly, the prices of such buildings differ greatly depending on their location, size, condition and legal status.

Advantages Disadvantages

  • The comfort and privacy of your home
  • No approval process
  • Larger living spaces / often multi-level
  • Complete control of maintenance and improvement
  • reselling or transferring is easier than condemning or cooperatives
  • Higher purchase price per square meter
  • Higher monthly living costs, namely: utilities, taxes, etc.
  • More legal and financial responsibilities and obligations, namely: zoning codes, taxes, higher mortgages
  • Care issues

Waterside Houses

A mansion is a house or mansion built in Istanbul right next to the water (almost just by the sea) and built with an architectural concept that usually takes into account the features of the coastal location. A family with a waterfront residence spends some time in this usually secondary residence located on the seafront, so going to the “mansion” has meant going both to the seaside and to the house there. In the contemporary sense, the term “mansion” is mainly used to refer to the total amount of 620 beach dwellings dating from the 19th century (some dating back to the 18th century and some dating back to the 20th century). Bosphorus in Istanbul. Therefore, they form one of the symbolic structures of the city. The truly treated tree was the dominant building material chosen for the mansions, as for the vast majority of traditional Turkish houses. Consecutive restorations often cause the wooden parts of the overall structure to gradually decrease, but wood remains the distinctive and decisive material of the historical mansions. It is not uncommon for the most recently restored mansions to use wood for exterior decoration.

Advantages Disadvantages

  • All Waterside Houses are at sea, so there are a limited number of mansions in the Bosphorus.
  • It is a symbol of wealth for all mansion owners.
  • Unfortunately, mansions are more humid than any other building.

Cooperative Apartment

A cooperative is a short term for residential properties owned and managed by a company. When you buy an apartment in a cooperative, instead of buying real estate, you buy shares from a company. The shares you purchase provide you with the right to live in a particular unit to which these shares are assigned. A cooperative usually has the basic mortgage, where your cooperative fee pays all or part of the payments, among other buildings. This is why, in general, cooperative care fees are higher than those of residences. Mortgage payment and property tax departments are generally tax-deductible and a substantial annual reduction in maintenance payments can be made.

Advantages Disadvantages

  • Typically lower purchase price per square meter
  • Less legal and financial responsibility for building maintenance and development
  • Generally higher tax cuts
  • More complex approval processes
  • Generally higher monthly maintenance fees
  • There may be restrictions on resale and sub-lease.
  • Less flexibility with apartment building and refurbishment

Cooperative and condominium apartment values cannot be compared for various reasons. Cooperatives have a much longer history instead of condominium in Istanbul, and most of the city’s old luxury apartments are cooperative, and new ones are condominium. The latter has become more popular in recent years, as owners are generally given more freedom to sell their units, and potential buyers do not have to pass the review of shareholder associations in cooperative buildings. Economic comparisons between two types of tenant ownership are often difficult due to factors such as most: the current financing and tax valuation of the building, the level of staff and service, the change of neighborhood conditions, its physical condition, whether it is an official landmark. and whether it fully takes advantage of its development rights. For more specific rules, contact your accountant or financial advisor.

Benefits of Using a Real Estate Agent

Quite simply, it is very difficult to find an ideal apartment without a real estate agent / broker. Istanbul market is wide and complex and moves very quickly; Trying to navigate on your own is a very difficult task. Brokers live and breathe the market – most buyers buy an apartment (at most) every few years, while brokers buy and sell every day. Therefore, the experience and knowledge they bring is invaluable and impossible to go elsewhere. It is useful if we want to think about the content on our website, it is intended to be used with the expertise of an experienced real estate broker.

When buying an apartment in Istanbul, keep in mind that you are competing against hundreds of people, even if there are not thousands of buyers looking for exactly what you are. By working with a single broker that you trust and are comfortable with, you will gain a competitive advantage over those who don’t use a broker or use a few brokers. Of course, this also means that if you are not using a broker or worse, using multiple brokers, you will have a competitive disadvantage to buyers who have a great relationship with a single broker. Therefore, when you think well about what you want, your first goal in finding the perfect apartment should be to find the right broker. By understanding this, one of the most important services offered by Turkish Luxury Realty is to contact a broker who can help you in the best way.

How Agents Work

Realtors and brokers (there is a difference between brokers and brokers, although these are often used interchangeably), they play a critical role in the market, which represents the buyer or seller in the transaction. So, in most transactions, there are two agents: one represents the buyer and the other represents the seller. Some brokers specialize in working with buyers, while others focus on representing sellers, while others do both. Some agents specialize in certain neighborhoods or buildings, while others cover the entire city.

Apartment advertisements (although ours are slightly different) are placed in the newspaper or on most websites by the agency representing the seller. If a buyer communicates directly with them, he bears only modest responsibility to represent the seller’s interests. Therefore, they cannot represent your interests, at least in a transaction involving the advertised circle. As a result, traditionally it has been difficult for buyers to find a tool that will meet the needs of the buyers, and therefore we created our service – to help buyers connect with an agent that will work on their behalf.

Costs of Using Real Estate Agent

In most cases, it is paid by the seller representing the buyer and paid by the seller representing the seller.

Serious

As with any transaction or commercial service, he only wants to work with serious participants in real estate. Vendors and agents do not want to show them to people who are not ready to buy their homes. If you’re still not ready to buy, it’s okay – let us know and let your broker serve you better.

Be Loyal to Your Broker

Broker loyalty (working with just one broker) is an important factor in finding a great apartment. Most brokers are incredibly working to find that perfect apartment. If they are motivated to accomplish this, if they are successful, then an action will be taken to get their efforts back. If you give a reason for a broker to suspect that a transaction will not take place (for example, if you are working with other brokers or are not serious about buying an apartment), it will naturally tend to invest in the time it takes to find it. your dream apartment. As a result, you will be exposed to a competitive disadvantage against other apartment buyers, as your broker will not be as motivated by both its buyers and brokers who are determined to buy an apartment.

The best thing you can do is to work with only one broker and make sure they are committed to working with them. Of course, the goal here is to find the perfect apartment for you, so if you are not comfortable with the broker you work with or if you are not questioning the ability to find what you are looking for, you need to let us know. We can discuss this with the broker and, if necessary, find a more suitable broker for you.

The Value of Being Pre-Qualified

Before visiting any flat, it is important that you are entitled to a mortgage loan on a regular basis in the city of Istanbul if you do not plan to pay all the money. There are several reasons why pre-qualification is important:

It will better understand the true price range you can compare, thus allowing you to focus on your search.Generally, buyers can actually meet more than they initially believe, and therefore spend time looking at apartments that do not fully meet their criteria.

A Few Points About Apartment Information

Do not hang out in the apartments you see on this website (or any other website or newspaper). The probability of buying the apartment you ask online is very close to zero. Consider apartment information on this site as a starting point and use extensive building information to become more familiar with the market. Unfortunately, the apartments are not updated as often as they should be. We have very little control over this, but this is a reality of the market. We hope this will improve over time, the best way to get accurate apartment information today is to consult your real estate agents.

Don’t do these

DO NOT work with multiple brokers. It is best to find a single vehicle that you can trust and be comfortable with. If you start working with multiple brokers, a single broker will not make the 100 efforts required, as no broker will believe that you are not affiliated with you (100).

Don’t just display 20 apartments to decide you’re not ready to move. Intermediary institutions spend a significant amount of time planning and do not receive payment for this service. If you are not sure whether you are ready to buy, explain this to your broker (for the reasons of your uncertainty) and your broker can help you with it. If you do not disclose it until the transaction begins, the broker will help you less.

DO NOT bid too low. Despite the fact that every apartment is negotiable and every transaction is negotiated, there is a certain point that a low offer can be a disgrace for both you and the brokerage house. If you are considering bidding too low, because you cannot get a higher bid, please make sure your broker knows this and can find more suitable apartments for you.

You are not obsessed with getting “a lot”. Buying an apartment is not about buying a lot – it’s about finding an apartment that you can’t wait to come home to every evening. As we all know, Istanbul can sometimes be a pain and it is invaluable to return to a apartment you love and escape from it all. As far as we are concerned, this is a big definition.

Explain to your broker your current financial situation and barriers to purchase (eg if you need to sell your current residence or if you cannot purchase by the end of the year, etc.).

Get ready to act fast – the market moves fast and you need to be ready to buy to be competitive.

Focus on buying an apartment – do not buy the transaction randomly.

Be realistic about the market and get a good idea of what you want.

Always contact your broker – remember, they are with you and can only assist you when you connect with them. Just return all phone calls and emails just as you would expect courtesy.

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