İstanbul Chamber of Real Estate Brokers President Sabri Ateş told the Anatolia news agency on Thursday that most people prefer not to purchase a home until the currently high loan interest rates drop. A customer must pay TL 1,675 per month on average for a TL 100,000 of loan with a five-year term. Ateş said it is impossible for a person who receives minimum wage to buy a home under such repayment conditions. Ateş noted that 110,000 homes were sold in the first three months of 2009, while this number dropped to 85,000 in the same period of this year. Ateş attributes the current stagnation in the housing market in part to the fact that most people have debts they can’t afford to repay, with credit card debt first among them.
He said 4,000 of the roughly 10,000 real estate agents in İstanbul have had to quit due to the stagnation in the first half of the year. “When you look at the entire market we see that 15,000 out of 50,000 real estate agents closed up shop in Turkey in the same period.” According to Ateş, problems will prevail in the market until the end of 2011. The sector representatives expect a recovery by the beginning of the year 2012.
