Apartments for Sale in Turkey: How to Read a Listing and a Title Deed
Most foreign buyers in Turkey buy an apartment, and most of the confusion they run into is vocabulary rather than law. This guide decodes the layout notation, the two kinds of apartment title deed, the occupancy permit, the service charge and the floor-area trap — before you shortlist anything.
An apartment is the default purchase. The vocabulary is where buyers slip.
The overwhelming majority of foreign purchases in Turkey are apartments rather than houses or land. That is partly supply — Turkish cities and coastal resorts are built vertically, in managed complexes rather than in streets of detached homes — and partly practicality, because an apartment in a serviced development is far easier to own from another country than a standalone property with its own garden, pool and boiler.
What trips buyers up is almost never the legal framework. Ownership is recorded centrally by the Land Registry, foreign ownership is permitted for citizens of most countries, and the purchase sequence is standardised. The difficulty is that a Turkish apartment listing describes itself in a set of conventions that do not map cleanly onto British, Gulf or Russian ones. A number that looks like a room count is not a room count. A floor area may or may not include the balcony. A title deed that looks complete may describe a building that has not yet been signed off for occupation. And a monthly charge you were quoted before you bought can be revised by a body you have not yet met.
This guide is written for buyers who are not resident in Turkey and who are relying on other people to look at things on their behalf. It covers how listings describe apartments, the two title deed types, why the occupancy permit matters more than it sounds, what the service charge actually buys, and the order in which to run the purchase. For the wider purchase walk-through, see our Turkey property buyer’s guide, and for the mistakes that recur across all property types, our guide to the pitfalls foreign buyers still fall into.
Turkish Apartment — Terms on the Paperwork
What each word on a listing or deed actually refers to
How a Turkish apartment describes itself
Start with the layout notation, because it is the first thing you will see and the easiest to misread. Turkish listings describe apartments as 1+1, 2+1, 3+1 and so on. The first number is the count of bedrooms; the +1 is the separate living room. A 2+1 is therefore a two-bedroom apartment with a living room — not a three-bedroom apartment, and not two rooms in total. Occasionally you will see a 2+2, which indicates two bedrooms and two reception rooms, usually in a larger or more unusual layout. Kitchens and bathrooms never appear in the notation at all.
This matters more than it first appears, because the notation says nothing about size. Two apartments both advertised as 2+1 can differ substantially in floor area, in the proportion given over to circulation space, and in whether the living room is a genuine reception room or a corridor with a sofa in it. The notation tells you the shape of the accommodation; the floor plan and the floor area tell you how much of it there is. Insist on both.
Then there is the floor area itself, which is where the market is least standardised. Turkish listings quote area either as brüt (gross) or as net. The gross figure covers the total enclosed footprint of the unit — internal walls included, and depending on the building it may take in balconies, terraces and an allocated share of common circulation area. The net figure counts the usable area of the rooms themselves. There is no single national convention requiring one or the other, so one agent will advertise gross and the next will advertise net, with nothing on the listing to tell you which.
Finally, read the building rather than only the unit. In a Turkish site — a managed residential complex — a significant part of what you are buying sits outside your front door: the security arrangement, the lifts, the landscaping, the pool, the gym, the car parking and the management company that runs them. Those things are funded by the service charge, and they are the single largest variable in the ongoing cost of owning a Turkish apartment. A cheap apartment inside an amenity-heavy complex is not necessarily a cheap apartment. For a sense of what different budgets buy across the market, our guides to house prices in Turkey و what a low budget actually buys are the place to start.
Two kinds of apartment title, and why the difference is not cosmetic
An apartment in a multi-unit building can be registered under one of two title types, and a buyer who does not know which they are being offered is missing the most consequential fact in the transaction.
Kat irtifakı — usually rendered in English as floor easement or construction servitude — is the title issued while the building is still under construction. It certifies your share in a project that is not yet finished. It is a real, registered interest, and it is entirely normal for an off-plan purchase; it is not a warning sign in itself. What it does not do is grant the full set of ownership rights that attach to a completed, legally recognised apartment.
Kat mülkiyeti — condominium ownership — is issued once construction is complete and the building has satisfied its legal and architectural conditions. Under this title your apartment is recognised as an independent property in its own right, with its own registration, and the ordinary consequences follow: it is more straightforward to sell, to leave by inheritance, to use as security and to transfer.
The two are connected by the occupancy permit. A building cannot be converted from kat irtifakı to kat mülkiyeti until it has obtained its iskan. From the registry’s point of view, a building without an occupancy permit stays registered as kat irtifakı and cannot be upgraded. So a seller offering you a completed, occupied apartment that is still on kat irtifakı is, whether or not they frame it that way, telling you something about the building’s permit status. That is a question to have answered before money moves, not after.
Whichever title type is on offer, read the whole record rather than the front page. A Turkish title deed lists not only the owner but also the encumbrances and annotations registered against the property — mortgages, liens, disputes and formal annotations. Buyers who look only at the owner’s name and the address are the ones who discover problems after completion. When you come to sell, the same record works in your favour or against you; our guide to selling property in Turkey covers that side of the transaction.
Kat irtifakı and kat mülkiyeti compared
The same apartment can sit under either title. What changes is what the title recognises, and what you can do with it.
| Question | Kat irtifakı (floor easement) | Kat mülkiyeti (condominium title) |
|---|---|---|
| When is it issued? | During the construction phase, before the building is finished. | After construction is complete and legal and architectural conditions are met. |
| Is the apartment a legally independent property? | No — it certifies a share in a project not yet completed. | Yes — recognised as an independent unit with its own registration. |
| Does the building have an occupancy permit? | Not necessarily — and without one it cannot be upgraded. | Yes — the iskan is what allows the conversion. |
| Full rights to manage, sell and lease? | Not the complete set that attaches to finished title. | Yes — sale, leasing and use all sit on ordinary footing. |
| Accepted by Turkish banks as security? | Generally not where the building lacks an occupancy permit. | Ordinarily yes, subject to the lender’s own criteria. |
| Normal for an off-plan purchase? | Yes — this is the expected title during construction. | Yes — this is what it should become on completion. |
| What should the buyer do? | Establish the completion and permit timetable in writing, and what happens if it slips. | Read the full record including annotations, then proceed on the standard sequence. |
Aidat: the charge that continues after the purchase ends
Every owner in a managed Turkish apartment building or residential complex pays aidat — a recurring service charge that funds the shared parts of the development. It does not pay for anything inside your own apartment. What it typically covers is security, cleaning of common areas, lift maintenance, landscaping, the upkeep of a pool and gym where the complex has them, and the administration of the building itself.
Two features of it catch foreign owners out. The first is that the amount is set and approved by the owners’ association, not by the developer and not by the agent who sold you the apartment. That means the figure quoted during a sales process is a current figure, not a fixed one, and it can be revised by a body whose meetings you may not attend and whose decisions are taken in Turkish.
The second is that the charge scales with the amenities, not with the apartment. A compact one-bedroom unit inside a complex with a large pool, landscaped grounds, a gym, a generator and twenty-four-hour security carries a meaningful share of the cost of running all of it. This is the mechanism by which an apparently inexpensive apartment turns out to have an expensive holding cost — and it is entirely visible in advance if you ask the right questions.
Aidat sits alongside the other recurring costs of ownership — the annual property tax, compulsory disaster insurance, utilities and, if you let the apartment, management and tax on the rental income. Our guides to property taxes in Turkey, مدیریت املاک و renting out a Turkish property cover those in detail. Budget for the whole set rather than for the purchase price alone.
Buying an apartment, in the order it should happen
Each step is cheap to run before payment and expensive to unwind afterwards. The order is the point.
Decide what the purchase is for
A home, a holiday base, a letting asset or an application-supporting investment are four different briefs, and they point at different buildings, different districts and different title situations. Settle this before you view anything, because it determines which of the later steps are compulsory for you.
Shortlist on like-for-like figures
Establish for every candidate whether the advertised floor area is brüt or net, and get the layout notation alongside a floor plan. Only then compare on price per square metre. A shortlist built on mixed measurement bases is worse than no shortlist.
Obtain a Turkish tax number and open a bank account
Both are administrative prerequisites rather than commitments, and having them in place early prevents the purchase stalling at exactly the point where speed matters.
Read the full title deed record
Not a photograph of the front of a tapu — the complete record, including the page listing encumbrances and annotations. Establish which title type applies, and if it is kat irtifakı, establish why.
Ask for the occupancy permit and the service charge history
The iskan confirms the finished building was approved for use. The aidat history tells you what the building costs to run and how competently it is managed. If either cannot be produced, that is information in itself.
Complete the zone check and arrange DASK
Confirm the property is not in a restricted military or security zone, and put compulsory disaster insurance in place. DASK must be valid before the Land Registry will register the transfer into your name.
Pay through the secure payment system, then register
From 1 July 2026, purchase funds for property transactions must move through Turkey’s mandatory secure payment system rather than directly to the seller, with funds released once the transfer of ownership is registered. Being asked to route around it is a reason to pause, not a shortcut.
What to establish about any apartment before you shortlist it
None of these require specialist knowledge. They require asking a specific question and getting a specific answer.
Which floor area is quoted
Brüt or net. Get it in writing for every property, and rebuild your price-per-square-metre comparison once you know.
Which title type applies
Kat mülkiyeti for a completed building, kat irtifakı during construction. If a finished building is still on the latter, ask why.
Whether the iskan exists
The municipal occupancy permit confirming the finished building complies with regulations and matches its approved plans.
What the service charge is and has been
The current aidat plus its recent history, and whether it is levied per apartment or by share of the building.
What the annotations page says
Mortgages, liens, disputes and formal annotations are registered against the property and belong to the record, not to the sales pitch.
Who manages the building
A managed complex is only as good as its management company and owners’ association. Ask who they are and how decisions get taken.
Want the title, permit and service-charge checks run before you commit?
We read the full deed record, confirm the occupancy permit and pull the building’s charge history as standard.
Apartments for sale in Turkey — frequently asked questions
The questions foreign buyers ask most often about layout notation, title deeds, permits and service charges.
Where to go next
Apartment markets city by city, and the rest of the foreign-buyer library.
- Istanbul apartments for sale — the country’s deepest and most varied apartment market.
- Alanya apartments for sale — districts, process and what to look for on the central Mediterranean coast.
- Antalya property for sale — a district-by-district guide for foreign buyers.
- Villas for sale in Turkey — the alternative to an apartment, and the checks that change with it.
- Can foreigners buy property in Turkey? — rules, limits and restricted zones.
- Escrow accounts in Turkey — how the secure payment system protects your funds.
- Turkey property guides — the full library of buyer guides in one place.
- Turkey property buyer’s guide — the complete purchase walk-through.
Have the apartment checked before you commit
Tell us the apartment you are considering and we will confirm the title type, read the full deed record and annotations, check the occupancy permit and obtain the building’s service charge history before anything is signed.
پیوستن به گفتگو