Citizenship for owners of luxury property in Turkey
Are you the lucky owner of a luxury property in Turkey worth over $1 million? Do you have a property portfolio in the country or more than $3 million in a Turkish bank? If so you may now qualify for Turkish citizenship.
According to the Official Gazette on January 12th 2017, “foreigners who buy a minimum of $1 million worth of immovable properties on the condition that they don’t sell them for 3 years, who make an equity investment worth over $2 million or who prove that they made a deposit of more than $3 million at a Turkish lenders or kept that money in the countries debt instruments for a minimum of three years, will be granted Turkish citizenship.”
The decree also stated that foreigners that can document the creation of 100 jobs in Turkey can also receive Kimlik (Turkish citizenship).
Decree announced as Turkish lira hits an all time low
The decree was announced last week, at a time when the Turkish lira hit an all time low against the US dollar. During the first two weeks of 2017, the liras value dropped more than 10% against the dollar, this on top of a 17% slump in 2016.
Turkish economist, Ugur Civelek, told Al Jazeera that he believes this latest government announcement shows the government are taking positive steps to boost foreign real estate investment. He commented, “with this move, Turkey aims to attract more financial resources, which it is lacking, into the country and ease the excess supply of real estate. In terms of foreign currency, real estate prices have decreased significantly in Turkey (due to the fall in value of lira). The expectation is to attract demand”.
Although Turkey struggled in many ways during 2016, the number of real estate sales grew by 4.5 percent.
According to the Turkish Statistical Institute, Turkey’s real estate figures increased 4.5% compared with the previous year to 1.2 million properties sold in the first 11 months of 2015. It should however be noted that the sales of real estate investments to foreigners fell by 19% dropping to 16,727 from 20,607 over the same period. This drop in foreign interest was no surprise and largely due to investor concern over the countries geopolitical issues and spate of terrorism over the year. The improvement thankfully stemmed from a surge in sales to Turkish citizens and Turks returning to invest in their home country from abroad. The foreigners that bought the most were the Iraqis, Saudis and Kuwaitis and this is expected to continue with added interest from the return of the Russians.
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