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Secondhand Real Estate in Istanbul for Turkish Citizenship by Investment

Mar 24, 2026 | Residency & Citizenship by Investment

At risk of sounding like a broken record, I emphasize once more that this passport deal is one of the best out there, especially for Westerners

$400,000 invested in almost any real estate in Turkey gets you and your family citizenship within one year. After three years you can sell the real estate and keep the passport free and clear. And after holding for five years, you will be exempted from local capital gains taxes.

It’s a no-brainer. A few years ago the minimum investment required was $250,000. And when the government announced that two months later the threshold would increase to $400,000 everyone came out of the woodwork in a frenzy to buy properties before the deadline.

Don’t be this person. This Turkish citizenship is objectively a great deal. It’s a real and recognizable country, as opposed to some obscure Caribbean island. It’s a respected country whose passport enables visa-free travel all over the emerging world. This program is too good to last forever. Every year they make the paperwork a little bit more complicated, and they will inevitably announce either a massive price increase, or closure of the program at some point in the future. 

Are there risks?

Of course. Since day one I have mentioned geopolitical risk in Turkey. The events of the past few weeks demonstrate this is a real risk. Foreign actors are trying to drag Turkey into the war through false flags.

Turkey has a history of war and conflict.

But right now in many ways it is a benefit for real estate investors. I, for one, have increased the rent on my Istanbul apartments. Why? Because people are fleeing the Gulf to countries with an actual military that can defend its people.

 

We never promoted Dubai as a safe haven at The Wandering Investor

We are one of the few offshore service providers that never went down that route. Dubai was a compelling tax and lifestyle play due to its convenience.  But a safe haven cannot be a medium sized country in the desert that goes around funding wars all over the region (Yemen, Sudan, Libya, etc.) while cutting deals with Israel and having Iran right across the Persian Gulf.

Again, this is not to hate on Dubai. It had its use case. But let’s be real, it was never a safe haven. The same goes with storing gold in Dubai.

This is how you go about getting Turkish Citizenship by Investment

Either:

  • Make a term deposit of the Turkish lira equivalent of $500,000 in a Turkish bank for three years (exposes you to a notoriously volatile and depreciating currency, but also highly lucrative interest rates of 35% plus)

or

  • Invest $400,000 in any Turkish real estate

In this video with Keith, we look at two second hand apartments in Istanbul that would qualify for the CBI.

https://youtu.be/SowRgRREK2Y?si=fwsoCk8bBxqtxonC

Only for people who can withstand volatility

We’ve been trumpeting the Turkish CBI for years, but with one clear message: if you cannot handle volatility and negative headlines, then Turkey is not right for you. It is and always will be in the news and not always for the best things.

If you become Turkish, you must embrace it. It’s part of the deal.

But with this one move you will give yourself, your family, and all your descendants access to one of the world’s greatest geopolitical play citizenships (make sure any future born children are registered at a Turkish consulate or in Turkey).

And if you want, though we only very rarely recommend this to clients, you can change your name (though it must be a Turkish name).

To a World of Opportunities,

The Wandering Investor.

Services in Turkey:

Articles on Turkey:

If you want to read more such articles on other real estate markets in the world, go to the bottom of my International Real Estate Services page.

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My favourite brokerage to invest in international stocks is IB. To find out more about this low-fee option with access to plenty of markets, click here.

If you want to discuss your internationalization and diversification plans, book a consulting session or send me an email.

Transcript of “Secondhand Real Estate in Istanbul for Turkish Citizenship by Investment”

LADISLAS MAURICE: Hello everyone, Ladislas Maurice of The Wandering Investor. Today we’re in beautiful Istanbul, and we’re going to be doing some viewings for the Turkish Citizenship by Investment Program. We’ll be looking at some real estate together with Keith. Keith, how are you?

KEITH: Great, yeah, doing very well. We’re going to look at a bunch of options today, ranging from budget to kind of higher end, typical of what we usually do.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And then Ayas is going to join us for one or two of the viewings, I guess. So, Ayas, where are you from?

AYAS: I’m a Canadian citizen and I live in the UAE.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, and you’re looking to make some investments here in Istanbul?

AYAS: Yes, yes, I want to invest here and hopefully get the CBI.

Investing in Istanbul vs. Dubai real estate

LADISLAS MAURICE: You live in Dubai, why not invest in Dubai?

AYAS: I have invested there, the market is just too expensive right now, and that made me look elsewhere. I think one needs to diversify and look elsewhere as well, not one place, no matter how good a place could be.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Did you exit the Dubai market from a real estate point of view?

AYAS: No, not really. I mean, I do have investments there still and I plan to keep it. I did not buy recently, so the prices were good then.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So essentially you’re keeping your exposure to Dubai, but now you’re looking to diversify elsewhere.

AYAS: Yes, exactly.

Tour of one bedroom apartment in Meşrutiyet Istanbul

LADISLAS MAURICE: So Keith, what are we looking at here?

KEITH: This apartment, I believe, is about 55 square meters, one bedroom, 10-12 year old building, $150K, 5 minutes to Nişantaşı.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, can you talk a little bit about the five minutes to Nişantaşı, what’s this neighborhood? Because it’s not Nişantaşı.

KEITH: We’re in the neighborhood of Meşrutiyet, which is actually just right on the border, so just turn around the corner here and make a left and you’re on Vali Konagi, which is like the main street in Nişantaşı, which is prime area in downtown Istanbul.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, so prime, prime here in Istanbul. All right, let’s go check it out.

KEITH: Yeah

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, so the maintenance is a little average. Shoes off, this being Turkish.

KEITH: So yeah, this is the kind of property very near Nişantaşı, excellent for the rental market, more or less optimized for the rental market. This will rent for about $800, maybe if it’s furnished a little bit more. It’s got a nice little view out the back. Hardly any maintenance that we have to do coming in, so that’s a big plus. Compact, 50-55 square meters. Very nice view there. Everything somebody needs, urban sort of living. Walkable distance to the metro as well, Osmanbey’s about seven, eight minutes.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So easy, non-controversial, occupancy rate will be 100% pretty much.

KEITH: Yeah, never empty.

LADISLAS MAURICE: The place like that will never be empty for sure. And it’s bright.

KEITH: Yeah. No maintenance, no renovation to be done. That’s good. Comes furnished, so no headache there. There’s an elevator in the building, not working right now, we’ll check on that. And it’s a pretty well-maintained building as you can see.

HOA will be really low, I’ll ask about that, but you’re looking at about $20-$30 a month, something like that. Tenant pays that as well.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, because yeah, they’ve been skimping a little bit on maintenance, you can tell from the lobby.

KEITH: They could put it up a little bit and do a few things, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So Ayas, what do you think of what Keith is trying to sell you?

AYAS: So we looked at this apartment, it’s a small one I would say, 50-55 square meter, but I think in a very good central area, a reasonable condition, just a little bit of touch-ups or maybe a couple of thousand dollars of repairs or things like that, and I think it will go good on rent. My purpose is investment, so I think it serves my purpose because it will have good return, will probably have 100% occupancy and I think it’s a good one.

Airbnb nightly rate for One-bedroom apartment

LADISLAS MAURICE: Easy to sell as well.

AYAS: Because of the location, I think it will be easy to liquidate.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So how many apartments are you going to see right now, like how long are you here in Istanbul?

AYAS: So I’m here for 3-4 days. I spent probably half a day with the lawyer, did the legal stuff, and then the next two to three days are with Keith, and I think in two days we are seeing 15 to 16, maybe even 18 properties. So Keith is quite efficient actually and productive.

How to buy property remotely in Istanbul

LADISLAS MAURICE: And are you going to buy properties on this trip or later on remotely or come back?

AYAS: So this was really just the groundwork which I did. I did not stay in a hotel sitting there, I walked the streets of central Istanbul, I used the metro, I wanted to get a sense for the city, for the society, for the place where I am planning to invest my money. I think this part is done, I got a good feel and sense for the market and now with the lawyer and Keith here working for me, I think I can do the decision making remotely.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And Keith, what percentage of your clients buy in person versus remotely?

KEITH: Yeah, I think maybe upwards of 50%, but a lot of people follow this kind of method that Ayas has done here and that is come and do some reconnaissance, maybe find their main property if they’re buying one, two, or three for CBI, kind of focus on getting that done. And yeah, pretty high percentage.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So I bought three properties here in Turkey, two of them in person, one entirely remotely that Keith sent to me. Keith hadn’t even checked it out, he told me I didn’t see it but it looks like a good one. I made an offer and it turned out to be the better of the three deals, the one where I literally did not get involved. So maybe there’s a learning in there. So now we’re going to go check out another property, right?

KEITH: Yeah, we’re going to head back up to Taksim and check out a place.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Right, let’s go. Okay.

Tour of a luxury apartment in Taksim, Istanbul

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, so we’re in a pretty prime location here, right?

KEITH: Yeah, Taksim Square, 200 meters.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Taksim Square is the Times Square of Turkey, 200 meters away.

The other apartment that we saw, when we’re running the numbers, you would end up on the long-term rental market after all expenses with a net rental yield of about 4.5%, but this you say can do better.

KEITH: Yeah, I think because of the Airbnb option here and it actually has the license potential whereas these, some of these other residential units, very difficult to get the license.

LADISLAS MAURICE: We’re going to walk through the lobby, you’ll see the target audience is more Middle Eastern, Eastern European. The target audience is not Finnish or Norwegian. But then we’ll see the apartment, the apartment is a bit more classical.

I feel like the furniture, I’m not sure it comes across on video, but it’s starting to feel very dated, a little bit…

KEITH: It’s definitely faded. I would spend, you know, a couple of K on updating the furniture for sure.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Can you tell us about the amenities in this building?

KEITH: Yeah, swimming pool, spa, pretty decent gym, parking. Yeah, pretty much everything.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And some of the apartments, this one doesn’t, but some of the apartments you’re telling me have Bosphorus views.

KEITH: Yeah, the price goes up a bit but as you go up higher in the building and the top two floors, top floor in particular has a pretty decent Bosphorus view.

Full calculation of Airbnb yield in Istanbul

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, cool, great. So we’re going to sit down now and do all of the Airbnb numbers in detail.

So Keith, what would be the nightly rate on Airbnb?

KEITH: $150 a night. We were running an Airbnb here about three years ago and it was $125 at that time. I’m sure it’s up over $150 now.

Net rental yield or One-bedroom apartment

LADISLAS MAURICE: So in the meantime, there have been some Airbnb regulations that have been implemented across Turkey, which means that only buildings with commercial licenses can do Airbnb, or if in a residential building, every single owner in the building must approve Airbnb. So it means that it’s just put a hard cap on the number of Airbnbs that are available on the market, which therefore means that prices have gone up. What would be the occupancy rate?

KEITH: I think you’d be looking at about 65%. Istanbul’s become much more year-round tourism than it was say 10, 15 years ago. So yeah, pretty high occupancy.

LADISLAS MAURICE: What about your property management for Airbnb?

KEITH: For Airbnb we charge 20%.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, and then there are the usual expenses like property tax, earthquake insurance, a little bit of money for incidentals and maintenance. What about the HOA?

KEITH: The HOA here is actually a little bit higher, it’s $400 a month, but that includes your heating, includes water, and you even have free internet here as well, so it’s not bad.

LADISLAS MAURICE: For Turkey, $400 a month of service charges sounds like a lot, but yeah, when you take into account that it’s got all of essentially everything.

KEITH: AC all throughout the summer, you got big windows here, so you know,

LADISLAS MAURICE: It’s really not too bad. After doing all of the numbers you end up with a net pre-tax yield of about 6.5%.

So Keith, what percentage of your clients look for pure investment versus investment but also having a pied-a-terre here in Istanbul?

KEITH: I think a lot of people might come in with the idea of getting a pied-a-terre as well, but in the end maybe 75% just go for straight investment. But still, yeah, some people want to have that option of the pied-a-terre. It kind of complicates the issue somewhat because then you’re really dealing with people’s personal preferences, whereas straight investment’s much easier for us to deal with.

Managing Turkish lira volatility when investing in real estate

KEITH: And one more thing, when you’re doing one advantage I suppose of the Airbnb is you get to use it for a month or two yourself and the income’s based in USD.

LADISLAS MAURICE: So less volatility versus the Lira.

KEITH: Yeah, if you’re worried about that, it can be a consideration.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Because one of the key worries that investors have when investing in Turkey is Lira volatility. So excluding the Airbnb aspect, if you go into long-term rentals, what do you have to say about Lira volatility with regards to rentals and also the value of the real estate investments people make?

KEITH: Well, in terms of the rental, you have to look at it like how the salaries are adjusted each year by the inflation. So there is some attrition in the amount you get versus a hard currency like the US dollar or Euro within the year, but it resets at the end of the year when you can do your allowable rental increase. So there is some, it does diminish in that period, but maybe not as much as you think. And then you get to reset it after a year. Now, of course, the property market and the values of the properties often track really in USD anyway. So that’s not as much of a concern. Actually, where the Lira goes is not so important in terms of the property values. It’s what’s the state of the actual real estate market that’s important.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Turks have come to view real estate as a safe haven, so notionally they see real estate in USD terms. So whenever there’s suddenly a large devaluation that takes place overnight like 10%, everyone the next day is calling their realtor saying hey, let’s, let’s raise the price. Sometimes people don’t do this and that’s when you have opportunities on the market.

KEITH: Yeah, we haven’t seen that kind of devaluation in the past few years, but certainly before that we saw these kind of things and always what happened it seemed that the prices reset in USD.

How to contact Keith for Istanbul and Izmir real estate

LADISLAS MAURICE: So I wrote a whole article on the real estate market here in Istanbul, the neighborhoods that are interesting, the neighborhoods that are not so interesting and key things you should know before entering this market. So there’s a link below, and if you’re looking to invest in Istanbul or in Izmir real estate, whether it be for pure investment, lifestyle or the citizenship by investment program, feel free to get in touch with Keith. There’s a link below in the description. Keith, thank you very much, I appreciate it.

KEITH: Great, all the best.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Make sure to download my free ebook, 12 mistakes to avoid when investing in international real estate, which you can find on my website link below. And feel free to follow me on Instagram @thewanderinginvestor. I look forward to hearing from you.

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