Buying property in Türkiye as a foreign buyer: the process, step by step

The one structural fact to understand first

In Türkiye, ownership of real property passes at the land registry — the Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü (TKGM) — and only there. A notarised contract, a reservation agreement, even full payment: none of these transfers ownership by itself. The transfer happens when both parties (or their narrowly authorised representatives) appear before the land registry and the new title deed (tapu) is issued.

Everything below is organised around that fact. The steps before the registry appointment exist to make sure that what is transferred is what you agreed to buy, free of the burdens you did not agree to carry.

Step 1 — Define the purchase before viewing anything

Budget, location, purchase objective, and — if citizenship is part of the objective — the conditions that attach to that route. The citizenship route imposes requirements ordinary purchases do not: a statutory minimum investment, restrictions on the property’s title status, conditions concerning the seller, and a three-year commitment not to sell that is annotated on the title. Deciding the objective first determines which properties are even worth viewing.

Step 2 — Verify before you commit, not after

The records that matter are public or obtainable, and they can be checked before any money moves: the title record and its regime, the encumbrance record (takyidat) showing mortgages, attachments and annotations, the ownership history (tedavül), the building’s permits and occupancy status, and — for new projects — the developer’s own record: trade-registry standing, contractor authorisation, and delivered projects.

This is the stage where problems are cheap. The same problem discovered after a notarised promise-to-sell, or after payment, is expensive. Whatever anyone shows you, your own bar-registered Turkish avukat should verify these records independently — legal opinions and the conduct of legal matters are reserved to avukatlar by law, and no seller-side or adviser-side review replaces your own.

Step 3 — Reservation and contract

New-project purchases typically begin with a reservation and then a sale contract with the developer. Read the contract as a delivery instrument: what exactly is delivered, to what specification, by when, and what happens — concretely, in money and in rights — if it is late or different. In Türkiye a contract for the sale of real property generally binds as a promise to sell when made in notarised form; it still does not transfer ownership.

If the purchase is directed at citizenship, the structure of the contract matters to the route itself, and the sequencing of payments and filings should be planned with your lawyer before signing, not reconstructed afterwards.

Step 4 — Payment, through the documented channel

Payments should run through banks, documented, from accounts connected to the buyer. For citizenship-route purchases this is not merely good practice but a condition: the foreign currency is converted through a Turkish bank with a currency-purchase certificate (Döviz Alım Belgesi), cash does not count, and crypto-assets may not be used in payments at all. Keep every receipt; the file you build during the purchase is the file the authorities later read.

Step 5 — Valuation

An official valuation report is required for foreign-buyer transactions. For citizenship-route sales, since 4 March 2024 the report may be drawn only by the designated valuation company through the official system — no party to the transaction chooses the valuer, and a privately commissioned report cannot be substituted. Treat the valuation as an independent data point, not an obstacle: if the official valuation lands materially below the price you agreed, that is information.

Step 6 — The registry appointment

The transfer itself: both sides appear at the land registry (in person or by narrowly scoped power of attorney), the title-deed fee is paid — 4% of the sale price in total, split 2% and 2% by statute between buyer and seller, though practice varies by negotiation — and the tapu is issued in your name. A sworn translator is required if you do not speak Turkish. For the citizenship route, the three-year no-sale commitment is annotated on the title at this stage.

Step 7 — After the deed

Utilities transfer, compulsory earthquake insurance (DASK), property-tax registration with the municipality, and — where the objective includes citizenship — the application file, which is a separate administrative process with its own sequence and its own timeline. The deed is the end of the purchase and the beginning of that file, not the other way round.

Where this can go wrong, honestly

The recurring failure patterns in this market are not exotic: unverified title taken on trust; payments outside the documented channel; contracts that promise delivery but price the failure to deliver at nothing; two-price structures and cash-backs that put the entire file at risk; and sequencing errors on the citizenship route that turn a compliant purchase into a non-qualifying one. Every one of them is preventable at Step 2 and Step 3 — which is why the checks live there.