Guz1

Terry,

I didn't buy an offplan property. I bought a half finished house on a site that was already up and running. The Living Permit for the house was already in place. The original builder had gone (think he went bankrupt) and my house was one of four that he had sold on to the developer who finished it off when we bought it from him. Stupidly, I just assumed that the house would be fixed up as arranged and when I got my title deed I would be finished with officialdom apart from paying the usual bills and taxes.

Neither is it just foreigners who don't know about habitation certificates and Kat Mulkiyet/Irtifaki. One of our Istanbul neighbours who bought just before us had never heard of it when I showed her our Kullanma. There were other unfinished houses on our site that nobody made any attempt to fix up until the sitesi committee started threatening to fine the owners. Once fines were mentioned all the half built houses were finished off.

It's not for us to tell the Turkish Government how to control their building industry, but I do think that if they put a ban on issuing title deeds for half finished properties there wouldn't be so many unfinished sites. Maybe the banks' refusal to give mortgages on Kat Irtifaki properties will have the same effect.