General Procedure

The general procedure when buying a property in Turkey seems,at first glance,similar to the purchase of a property in England and very familiar to anyone who has bought a property in continental Europa: sign a contract; do some checks; sign a deed of tittle. This is deceptive. The procedure in Turkey is very different and even the use of the familiar English vocabulary to describe the very dissimilar steps in Turkey can produce an undesirabe sense of familiarity with the procedure. This can lead to assumptions that things that have not been discussed will be the same as they would in England. This would be a wrong and dangerous assumption.

  In most cases, the basic procedure is this:

• You sign a reservation contract. This takes the property off the market for a limited period-say 30 days.You will usually pay a holding deposit of, say, £2,000.
• You decide whether to have a survey done if the property is resale or completed new property.
• Your lawyer makes enquiries about the property. These will include a title search to ensure that the person trying to sell the property to you actually owns it (often they don't! ) and a planning search to ensure it has planning permission. Depending on the nature of your case, other searches may be needed.
• Your lawyer reports his findings.
• If all is well, you sign a preliminary contract of purchase. This cummits you to the purchase and you pay over a deposit,typically of 30 per cent of the price of the property.
• If building work is involved ,such as ain a new propert, stage payments are made. At the end of the building work a habitation certificate is issued, certifying that the property is fit to be lived in and complies with the terms of the building licence.
• A final purchase contract is signed at the land registry and your title is registered.

Along the way there are, of course, other steps to be taken. Normally a power of attorney will be needed and military permission tu buy is required. In some cases a company will have to be set up. Taxes must be paid. But these are the main steps. The steps will be different if you are buying a resale property  or if you are buying either a new or a resale property via a Turkish limited company.