‘Buying a Property: Turkey’ by John Howell and Tim Locke

No wonder the experts rank moving house as one of the most stressful experiences you can have, coming narrowly after bereavement and divorce!

If you are planning to buy in a foreign country where you are unfamiliar with both the laws and the language the problems are of course compounded. Even if there are no problems, you are likely to be extremely stressed, wondering if everything really can be going as smoothly as it seems to and if there is a hidden catch you are blissfully unaware of.

I am a member of several Internet forums for expats in Turkey and have frequently been asked for advice from people. For example, there is a lady who thought she had bought a finished property in Turkey because she had a title deed, but the villa complex did not yet have a habitation certificate, so the local authority would not hook them up to electricity and water. The developer had been dragging his feet for years over this; my English Internet friend was outraged that the villa owners were going to have to pay for this process to be completed. “It's the developer's responsibility,” she wailed to me. “We should take him to court and make him do it.” I could only reply that although in a moral sense she was right, in a practical sense if she wanted electricity and water this side of the next century, her Turkish neighbors were right. Swallow your sense of justice, pay up and get your utilities on. Then sort out later whether it is worth taking the developer to court to get your money back.

But you don't need to take just my word for it. A quick glance through last month's expat pages in Today's Zaman gives many similar examples. Expert lawyer Berk Çektir is a true friend to expats as he gives us advice ranging from arguments about ownership to negotiating the bureaucracy. Don't just see the title deed, he advises, go and check at the land registry office that the person holding the deed is in fact the current owner. When you sell a property in Turkey, you don't surrender your title deed. A new one is issued to the new owner. So, in theory, a crook can sell a property many times over to gullible foreigners if they rely on sight of a title deed rather than checking with the official register.

An article in this newspaper three weeks ago reported that foreigners are often backing out of home purchases in Turkey due to the extraordinary bureaucracy. It quotes the president of the Antalya Chamber of Real Estate Agents calling for the process to be shortened to 15 days, as in Spain.

So, how can you buy your dream home in Turkey in such a way that you really do get to live happily ever after? It must be possible, as over 85,000 foreigners have managed it.

Cadogan Guides and the Sunday Times have collaborated to produce a winning guide to take you through the process. Writers John Howell and Tim Locke are a top international property lawyer and international travel guide team who were ably assisted by Turkish legal experts.

The guide covers choosing a location, with an excellent overview of all the regions and details about potential locations. It gives all sorts of suggestions for finding out about properties. Detailed advice is given on how to structure ownership so as to avoid the traps of the UK and Turkish tax systems. Residence permit issues, settling in, insurance, making a will, utilities, letting your property, even bringing your pet to Turkey… All these are covered and more.

But the main meat of the book covers advice on selecting and purchasing your property. Full of checklists that show the advantages and disadvantages of every type of choice (old property vs. new property, apartment vs. villa, work-in-progress vs. finished property, etc.) the prospective buyer is led carefully through the process of making the right decision.

Then all of the steps involved are explained simply and clearly, with all the necessary warnings of the pitfalls to avoid at each stage.

Howell and Locke's advice doesn't just equip you against unscrupulous “others” who may be waiting to make a fast buck out of the naive foreigner who has just turned up on their doorstep. In the first instance, during the selection stage, often your own worst enemy can be your dreams. Many have fallen in love with a ruined farmhouse in the middle of the countryside, only to find later that there are not only no utilities connected, but no possibility of them being connected for at least 20 years.

The practical advice is interspersed with many case studies that add flesh and bones to the “dos and don'ts” being given. The authors stress that you do your research properly and don't neglect to see what it would be like living there. A couple of theater-lovers moved into their dream property in a Turkish village, only to be disappointed that the village had no amateur dramatics society and neither of the two nearby towns had a theater in Turkish, let alone English. Long-term residents in Turkey would say “of course not!” but visitors coming from abroad may be tempted to assume that Turkey is just like their home country, just a different language and a different religion.

Other practical examples include the realtor who added on 20,000 pounds to the price, for his extra commission, and the land use survey that revealed that an apartment complex had been built on land that was zoned to become a hotel within the next five years!

So, if like the authors of this book, you believe Turkey is outstandingly beautiful, exotic, not frightening and an inexpensive place to live with low crime rates and an increasingly stable economy and political environment and you are thinking of buying a property, then their essential guide full of reality checks is just what you need to make sure your dream home is just that and not a nightmare.

“Buying a Property: Turkey” by John Howell and Tim Locke, published by Cadogan, 13.99 pounds in paperback, ISBN 978-186011373-4