Our Practice on Property Purchase
We provide the clients full legal services in buying any kind of real estate and property such as flat, shop, store, land, apartment, building, office, residence, house, villa, etc in Turkey (especially in Istanbul) for citizenship purposes.
Considering that the clients for the citizenship are foreigners and has very limited knowledge about the Turkish Laws and the Turkish market, they have many concerns in their mind about any potential fraud about the target property. In that sense, we diligently follow and finalize the property purchase process by ensuring that there is no fraud in transfer of the property to our client, thanks to our deep experience in handling title deed transfers.
During these services, at the first stage, we make a due diligence and check the legal status of the property and check whether the property is suitable for citizenship and suitable for transferring to a non-Turkish person as per the Turkish Laws. Then, we check whether there is any lien, mortgage or other restriction registered on the property which prevents the title transfer to the client. Needless to say that, we arrange all the paperwork required for the title deed transfer to facilitate the whole process for the client.
On the other hand, if the client buys a property which is still under construction, in that case the property has no title deed yet and the client is required to buy the property by signing a Property Sale Promise Agreement to be signed with the Project Developer before the public notary in Turkey. If this is the case, we revise the agreement drafted by the Project Developer in line with interests of the clients. You should note that such agreements are generally drafted by the Project Developers, so naturally they cover many articles which are solely in favour of the Project Developers, so it is important that such agreements are reviewed and revised by a Turkish Lawyer who is expert on property purchase and Turkish Citizenship process in order to ensure that the terms of the Property Sale Promise Agreement are not against the client.
You should also note that, once the client appoints us as his/her attorney by providing us power of attorney, we will be able to follow and finalize the title deed transfer even in the absence of the client. As our law firm is located in Istanbul, we may easily follow the title deed transfers within Istanbul even though we may also freely travel to other cities in Turkey for title deed transfer process.
Our legal services during title deed transfer includes the following points:
- Provide the client an estimation about the full costs and taxed about the property purchase process.
- Perform legal search on the title deed (due diligence) to ensure that the property is suitable for citizenship and available for transfer (by ensuring that the property is not encumbered by any encumbrances, lien, mortgage or other restriction etc.
- Translation services to the client to ensure that the client understand the full spectrum of the property purchase process.
- On behalf of the client, negotiate with the seller (or with the seller’s lawyer) on the terms of the property sale.
- Organization and assistance in all matter related with the payment of the property price to the seller.
- Ensure that the Turkish legislation about anti-money-laundering are duly complied with.
- Assistance with verifying the accuracy of all types of charges, such as notarial charges, registry fees, etc. as well as their payment.
Last of all, the following documents needed for the Land Registry Process (title deed transfer) in Turkey are as follows:
- Passport of the buyer
- 1 biometric photo (size 50mm x 60mm) in ICAO form with white background
- Power of Attorney to be certified by the Public Notary
- Receipt of the bank transfer for the purchase of the real estate approved by the relevant bank (signed and sealed by the bank)
- Tax ID
- Market value report of the real estate from the Municipality
- Evaluation report for real estate (price expertise)