Turkey has seen 92% increase in home sales to foreigners due to citizenship scheme and affordable property prices, which attracts large number of foreigners
The Turkish Government has simplified and eased property rules including scraping of military clearance, thus speeding up time to register titles. Property deeds can be registered within one day.
Turkey introduced citizenship by investment scheme which attracted lots of interest in the middle east which only requires USD 250,000 property investment or USD 500,000 deposit in banks or just create 50 jobs. These minimums were cut by 50% by government last year.
According to Invest Turkey, FDI inflows into Turkey totaled USD 13.2 billion in 2018, up 14 percent year-on-year, shows that despite all the adversities Turkey has undergone in the past two years, there has been no decrease in investor appetite in the country.
Top cities for foreigners
A total of 3 321 homes sold to foreigners in Feb 2019 alone highest in Turkey for the year, according to Turkish statistics office
- İstanbul – 672 house sales,
- Antalya – 672 house sales
- Ankara – 196 house sales,
- Bursa – 192 house sales
- Yalova – 138 house sales.
Top Foreign property buyers
Iraq citizens bought 628 houses from Turkey in February. The followers of Iraq were Iran with 307 house sales, Russian with 236 house sales, Afghanistan with 166 house sales and Kuwait with 150 house sales.
House Sales for 2019 to Foreigners
| Ülke Country |
Toplam Total |
Ocak January |
Şubat February |
| Total | 6 557 | 3 200 | 3 357 |
| Iraq | 1 233 | 605 | 628 |
| Iran | 612 | 305 | 307 |
| Russia | 431 | 195 | 236 |
| Afghanistan | 357 | 191 | 166 |
| Kuwait | 280 | 130 | 150 |
| Jordan | 276 | 151 | 125 |
| Saudi Arabia | 251 | 108 | 143 |
| Germany | 241 | 119 | 122 |
| Yemen | 240 | 97 | 143 |
| Azerbaijan | 200 | 95 | 105 |
| Palestine | 169 | 103 | 66 |
| Egypt | 165 | 83 | 82 |
| United Kingdom | 146 | 76 | 70 |
| Libya | 138 | 69 | 69 |
| Qatar | 138 | 73 | 65 |
| Lebenon | 106 | 45 | 61 |
| Sweden | 103 | 52 | 51 |
| Ukraine | 102 | 50 | 52 |
| United States of America | 83 | 38 | 45 |
| Algeria | 81 | 45 | 36 |
| Other | 1 205 | 570 | 635 |
Residence permits
Foreign Property investors are issued short term residence permits first which then converted to citizenship under the new citizenship scheme.
According to Ministry of Interior, as of 14th march 2019, close to 900,000 residence permits were issued to foreigners.
Iraqis, Syrians were the top foreigners holding short term residence permits as of 2017
