Finding a Buyer: Reality vs Illusion...

  

Finding a buyer for Turkish property has been challenging for foreign owners in the last few years. This is partly because the number of foreigners buying real estate in Turkey has dwindled significantly. And the English speaking sector of the Turkish real estate market is comprised primarily of foreign buyers relying on English. 

Recent changes to Citizenship Investment criteria to $250,000, has resulted in an increase of foreign buying from new and different parts of the world, but these buyers can not purchase property owned by a foreigner. Foreign owned property does not qualify for citizenship investment purposes.

So if there are few buyers of foreign owned Turkish property in the English speaking foreign sector of the real estate market in Turkey, how can a seller get into the ‘real’ Turkish language speaking sector to find Turkish speaking buyers? 

The solutions fortunately are several,  and not limited to going to your local English speaking neighbour-hood agent or online agent. In the ‘real’ Turkish speaking property market in Turkey no one uses agents anymore, and hasn’t for 5-10 years. This is because there are smarter, faster, and better solutions. 

For example there are on-line portals - no not agents websites-  these are on-line exchanges in the Turkish language, where buyers and sellers login to communicate with one another in private:  no agents. Sellers list their properties, and buyers can find what they want with the very good search engines the on-line exchanges have. There are several on-line exchanges, and several on-line ‘e-Bay type’ variations, and more. Together they comprise more than 95% of all real estate listings in Turkey.   

That’s where the market is, and that’s the reality. Dealing with English speaking foreign agent’s is just an illusion….

Agents Rely on the Language Barrier to Protect the Illusion of their Way of Business...

The way the ‘foreign’ real estate sector in Turkey operates, is somewhat illusionary. Much of this illusion is fueled by agents and their promotional press, which dominates the English speaking internet search engines: not the Turkish language ones.  And the reasons these English speaking on-line agencies primarily serve only foreigners, is so that they can dictate a business process that is more advantageous for them (at the expense of the foreign buyer or seller). They can demand a deposit in advance from a foreign buyer (and get their commission in advance this way). And these agents can also demand a higher buying price from foreigners, to use as a hidden price 'mark-up' which the foreign seller will never see. At least in the past. 

Not so much now, because there simply are too few foreign buyers (citizenship buyers can not buy from another foreigner). But the agents wait patiently, protecting their ‘way of doing business’, with the English language websites for foreigners that don't speak Turkish. Hoping the foreigners will be 'none the wiser'. Hoping one day the foreign holiday home buyers will return in masses like the good old days.

Over recent years the way property is bought and sold in Turkey has changed significantly. With changes in technology, the old ways, of using an agent, are a relic of the past for more than five years: local Turks no longer use agents. Proof of this widely recognized development, is the fact that more than 85% of real estate transactions now originate from on-line ‘for sale by owner’ portals, where buyers and sellers can meet discreetly with messaging, and conduct their transactions without agents. Agents are still there, lurking, but quite often when a buyer discovers a property is being listed and offered by an agent, the buyer just moves on to another property. In this respect the Turkish real estate market is more focused and progressed in moving toward a ‘peer-to-peer’ transaction environment than most developed markets in western countries.

Unfortunately, buyers and sellers from these western countries are not aware that the property market in Turkey has changed in this way. And coming from countries were similar changes are not as progressed, these foreign buyers and sellers have some difficulties in adapting to the changes. This can be seen in the size of the English speaking real estate sector in Turkey. Unlike the much larger domestic Turkish speaking market, the smaller English speaking segment is dominated by English speaking agents: a surprisingly vast number. When searching for real estate in the Turkish language, none of these English speaking agencies are shown; but when searching in English, none of the much larger and dominant real estate portals are shown. 

This is an interesting dichotomy and my blog offers a commentary on what goes on between these two ‘parallel universes’ operating in the same location. Enjoy…!