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We toured 4 apartments in central Istanbul for Turkish citizenship by investment

Aug 9, 2025 | Private List update

People often ask me “what is the best Citizenship by Investment program?” There is no clear cut answer to this question as it really depends on your individual or family situation and personal objectives.
Having said this, for Westerners with spare cash, Turkey is an absolute no-brainer. First of all, it’s a real investment. You invest $400,000 in any real estate in the open market in Turkey and get citizenship this way for you and your family.

All it takes is a single trip to Turkey, and you’ll get your passports within a year.

After 3 years you can sell the real estate, or keep it 5 years and be exempted from local capital gains taxes. In the meantime, you can expect gross rental yields of between 5% and 7%.
And the best part? It goes down the generations. Just register your newborn in Turkey or at the nearest Turkish consulate and the baby will become Turkish as well.

By shifting $400,000 to Turkey for a few years, you are leaving a legacy for your descendants.

But you must be careful

Business is cutthroat in Turkey. I’d say about 80%-90% of Turkish CBI applicants end up buying into really unfavourable, overpriced, new real estate. This is your biggest risk. Ignore all the flashy brochures.

In this video with Keith, we toured 4 apartments on the secondary in the core of Istanbul. 

Are they flashy? No
Do they look amazing? No

But are they decent investments that are liquid and that will be easy to rent out? For most of them yes.

https://youtu.be/vlKa0aAynzM?si=728OtQsG2JwrDZ9H

What are the risks?

Turkey is not for people with weak resolve. If you cannot stomach volatility, then please stay away from this program. Turkey, being at the crossroads of continents and civilizations will always be a central player in geopolitical drama.

As a Turkish citizen you have to accept:
– Geopolitical risk
– Currency risk
– Political risk
– Internal civil issues
– International pressure on your country

Things can go in any direction in Turkey.

Could it remain a regional power between East and West? Sure
Could it suddenly fully align with the West? Sure
Could it suddenly fully align with the East? Sure

Ultimately, nobody knows. But you and your descendants will be citizens of a regional power and of an actual country with one of the world’s largest diplomatic corps and a dynamic economy.

And good food and access to very decent healthcare and universities as a local are nice bonuses as well 🙂

Don’t forget Egypt

This country comes with its own set of issues and risks, but the reality remains that all you need to do is invest $300,000 in any real estate in the country to obtain citizenship for you, your underage children, and up to four wives. You can sell the real estate after 5 years.

Turkey obviously has a much better travel document, but Egypt is a fun and niche option that is also an actual investment as opposed to a donation.

More information on the Egyptian citizenship by investment program.

To a World of Opportunities,

The Wandering Investor.

Articles on Turkey:

Services in Turkey:

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Transcript of “We toured 4 apartments in central Istanbul for Turkish citizenship by investment”

LADISLAS MAURICE: Hello, everyone. Ladislas Maurice from thewanderinginvestor.com. Today, I’m in Istanbul with Keith, my realtor here, and we’re going to be having a look at real estate for the Citizenship by Investment Program. Keith, he’s been living and working here, helping people invest in Turkish real estate for many years now.

KEITH: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And so, what’s the plan for today?

KEITH: Today, we’re going to look at three properties for Citizenship by Investment. The first one will be a one-shot CBI, right around $400k, just a little bit over $400k. The other two will be one for $250k, and then, finally, a smaller one for around $125k.

Buying multiple apartments for Turkish citizenship by investment

KEITH: You could stack the smaller ones, potentially, to reach the CBI mark. We’ll talk more about that after, and the one shot. We’ve mostly not been doing one-shots, and I think the property today will illustrate why we might want to consider the investment approach, because we’re not thoroughly happy with what we’re getting at the $400k mark. The investment approach seems to work better. If you just go in hardnose investment rather than lifestyle, in the end, I think the numbers work better.

LADISLAS MAURICE: These are apartments that you’re not selling, we’re just essentially going on a tour. You’re checking them out for [crosstalk 01:12].

KEITH: Yeah, exactly. We’re not necessarily advocating this particular property. I’ll give you my feedback, you’ll get some idea from what I say whether I think it’s good value or not, but we’re not necessarily advocating what we’re looking at today. This is to give you a snapshot of the market. Maybe one of them will be suitable.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, can you tell us a little bit about the neighborhood?

KEITH: Neighborhood here is great. We’re right in the center. It’s called Hanımefendi Street. It’s in Merkez Mahallesi in Istanbul. It’s right in the center of Şişli, between Osmanbey and Mecidiyeköy. You have two metros that are equidistant within five, seven-minute walk. Perfect neighborhood.

Tour of a $400k apartment in Bomonti, Istanbul

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, cool. This is the building right here.

KEITH: Yeah. Another small elevator, we get to know each other a little bit better here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs]

KEITH: [laughs] I’ve just had a little walkthrough before we came so I can narrate the apartment here for you. It’s fully fresh renovation, slightly Middle Eastern/Russian, you have a lot of gold in here.

LADISLAS MAURICE: [laughs]

KEITH: But it’s quite well done, quite good quality materials. It’s 150 square meters, so it’s a big, roomy place. You have this living room, which is about 5,560 square meters. We’re on the second floor, by the way. It’s a little bit arabesque style. I don’t know if that’s the correct term, actually, arabesque, but I think you get what I mean. Nice, clean finish, though, got a–

LADISLAS MAURICE: $400,000 for this?

KEITH: Yeah, just a little bit over $400k. You’ve got some storage here. Nice wide plank flooring, some Turkish-inspired tiles. Here’s your kitchen. This is very nice. You could have done an open kitchen, but a lot of Middle Eastern clients, they prefer the kitchen separated, so this works really well for the local market. This would rent for at least $1,500, maybe $1,750.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Furnished or unfurnished?

KEITH: Furnished at the upper end, towards $1,750, unfurnished towards the lower end, LG appliances.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool.

KEITH: Marble countertops.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Roughly, a gross yield of 5%?

KEITH: Yeah, gross yield of 5% sounds about right.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay.

KEITH: You have a little spare washroom here. Again, in Turkey, or in Istanbul, this is important. If you’re renting to non-couple or bachelor, you need extra washrooms. Here we have here the second one. Right here, again, Arab theme-inspired. Definitely quite a clean job they’ve done on it. I like it. And you have a laundry room here. We even have another washroom in here. Here’s the ensuite, which is, I really like this room, to be honest, nice and quiet in the back. You have access to the balcony. Again, Turkish tiles, handmade tiles in the back there. You have a third washroom here, which is really kind of luxury downtown, we can say. And this might push the rent up a little bit more.

Another kind of important thing, this might put it more into the investable category than I would have initially assessed, all of the owners a portion of the ground floor. Right now, that’s where the doorman lives, or kapıcı lives. There’s no fee, no HOA fee for this building at all. And if the owners agree, they can actually sell that space. How much is it worth? It’s not worth that much. But again, it might be worth $100k. You have four units in here, everybody gets $25k, so consider that when you look at the price as well. Second bedroom, little bit small, child’s bedroom. No access to the balcony. Through here, third bedroom, pretty good size and access to the balcony.

All in all, very spacious, pretty well-put-together property. Price wise, would I say that this is the deal of the century? No, not at all. But if you want to do a one-shot, and this appeals to you, and you want to be downtown, these are kind of in line with the prices downtown.

LADISLAS MAURICE: It’s a much better deal than buying a one-bedroom. When you go online and you Google, “Turkey, Istanbul Citizenship by Investment,” you have all these one-bedroom apartments, like, in far-flung areas for $400,000. You are guaranteed to lose money on those things. Here, personally, I’d go in there negotiating quite hard, to be honest with you. But overall, it’s better value.

KEITH: I’m looking at the details here, too. These are not cheap doors that they put in. They haven’t tried to skimp on the cost, I like that.

LADISLAS MAURICE: It’s rare.

KEITH: That’s important when you’re trying to resell it.

LADISLAS MAURICE: It’s rare in Turkey.

KEITH: And, it’s highly rentable, it’s downtown. What can I say? You don’t expect to get the deepest value, necessarily, when you get up in that $400k, $500k range, but you can get quite a nice property downtown for that money, of course.

Tour of a $400k luxury one-bedroom in Divan Bomonti residence

LADISLAS MAURICE: Fantastic. Cool. Now let’s go see the next property.

KEITH: Let’s go.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Great. Tell us about this one.

KEITH: This is the Divan Bomonti, one of the best residential high rises in Bomonti. Real downtown of Istanbul. And it’s got all the facilities you want, great gym, great pool, very nice finish on the apartments. This is an elite place in uptown.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, the outdoor pool is even heated, so that’s pretty nice.

KEITH: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. All right, great. Let’s go check out the apartment.

KEITH: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. Keith, show us the place.

KEITH: Okay. Here we have a one-bedroom. It’s 65 square meters net, so it’s a pretty good size one-bedroom. It has an amazing view. We have a view of the Bosphorus, we have a view of the Golden Horn, we have a panoramic view of the city. It’s a little bit muted today because of the colors, but you can see this amazing view out here. And you get to see the water, you get to see the entrance to the Bosphorus, and out there, that’s the Marmara. It’s an amazing view. If you get a clear day, wow, it’s really fantastic. Still, it’s fantastic even today.

We are in the heart of Bomonti. This is not one of these properties out in some suburb, this is in pure downtown, and it’s a lovely property. As I said before, the Divan Bomonti is part of the Koç family, very high quality. The tenant profile, the owner profile, wealthy white collar Turkish people. And these kind of properties, you’ll end up with a 3%, 3.5%, maximum, 4% yield. But it’s a store of value play, for sure.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. Essentially, the way I would look at this is for the citizenship thing, because it’s $400k, you said, right?

KEITH: Yeah, one of these apartments would just about hit it, yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. This is a citizenship. And you compare this with the offerings, again, that you get. I keep on referring to this, but it’s important, because too many people make this mistake. They’ll buy a new one-bedroom, essentially, like this, a bit newer, but far away, far away, like, literally an hour away with public transport from downtown. And here, sure, it’s on the secondary market. How old is this building?

KEITH: This building is about eight years old, but it’s held up so well that you almost, there’s no renovation. You could spend $1k, $2k touching things up. That’s it.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah. You either get something new an hour away, or you get something a little older, but well maintained in one of the best neighborhoods in Istanbul. Clearly, from an investment point of view, this is superior, as well as from a lifestyle point of view.

KEITH: Yeah, lifestyle, for sure. I would live here. These other locations, I’m not even going to think about.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. And the amenities?

KEITH: Amenities, you have everything. We’ll show them in the video later. You have a beautiful indoor, outdoor pool, an amazing gym, you have a market, you have lots of selections, and you walk out the door and there’s, like, Bomonti’s at your feet.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool, fantastic. Let’s move on to the next property.

KEITH: Yeah. Now we’ll look at a couple of more budget-minded properties. But I think we’ve looked at two that are around $400k that are quite different, so I think that will give people an idea.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, let’s go.

Tour of a duplex apartment in Ferikoy, Istanbul

KEITH: Great. We’re going to go look at a duplex apartment up here. It’s about 100 square meters. In the background, you can see Bomonti, so it’s about a five-minute walk to Bomonti. It’s a 10 to 12-year-old building. Very good yield situation. We’re starting to see the yields recover in Istanbul vis-à-vis last year. Now that’s a result of the property prices going down somewhat. I can’t say that they’ve crashed, but they’ve gone down, 10%, 15%, for sure, and the rents continue to go up, so this is a very good investment property.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, let’s go.

KEITH: Yeah. Hi, guys. We’re going to walk through a duplex apartment here. It’s $140k. This is, in terms of our series that we’re making, a little bit towards the lower end. Definitely, an investment property. You’d probably need to spend about $10k to really sharpen this place up. You’ll see the kitchen, that’s where I’d start spending a little bit of money in here. But it’s not horrific, it’s quite nice, but some money would help you out here. And now we’re going to go into the living room. We have here [laughs] we have somebody in there. We’ll come back there. We have a bedroom here–

LADISLAS MAURICE: Or, maybe not.

KEITH: [Laughs] Maybe not. We have a living room here. That’s a washroom in there. We need to get that. Okay, let’s go upstairs. Definitely, in terms, if you’re just looking for rental income-generating property, I think something like this, it’s going to get 6%, 7% gross, and after all the taxes, maybe 5%. You have a bedroom here, leads off. You have a terrace. Bomonti, center of Bomonti is about a five-minute walk from here, okay, so you’re really–

LADISLAS MAURICE: It’s very residential.

KEITH: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: I don’t think it’s a place where foreigners would like to live, so this is not a lifestyle property.

KEITH: Yeah, not a lifestyle property.

LADISLAS MAURICE: This is purely local market.

KEITH: Straight, hardnose investment. Here we go.

LADISLAS MAURICE: It would be hard to lose money on this thing, we’re talking about $1,400 a square meter, roughly.

KEITH: Yeah, and not an old building. There’s a washroom here. You have two washrooms, actually. This is where you could start to spend some money on the renovations. Downstairs, the kitchen, the washroom. The washroom here, new flooring. Yeah, $10k, $15k can go pretty easily. And you have your third bedroom here, like, kind of a children’s bedroom, or an office to be fixed, something like that.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. And the rents would be in dollar terms, roughly?

KEITH: Yeah, about $700.

LADISLAS MAURICE: $700.

KEITH: I think it’s worth getting in here, doing some minor reno. Nothing major, I wouldn’t rip the place apart. It’s not that kind of place. I’d come in, spend about $10k, maximum, $15k, you end up with a nice–

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. And also, it’s important to note that when you apply for citizenship, renovation costs do not count towards the $400,000, so apartments like this are ideal in the sense that you can buy them, you do a little bit of renovations, not too much, and then you have something that looks half decent. All right, cool. We’re going to go check out the next one now?

Tour of a budget $117k apartment in Ferikoy, Istanbul

KEITH: Let’s do it, yeah. The ultra-budget one.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool.

KEITH: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: This is the last one?

KEITH: Yeah, this is our budget option. It’s coming in at about $115k all in, one-bedroom, downtown, newish building, good yield. Let’s have a look.

LADISLAS MAURICE: And you sold it to a client of yours, this one?

KEITH: Done. Sold. Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Okay, so these are actual figures?

KEITH: Yeah.

LADISLAS MAURICE: All right, cool. Let’s go.

KEITH: All right. As you can see, you have a nice door here to begin with. And then you come into the apartment, just about 50 square meter apartment. Downtown, something like this, newly renovated, almost brand-new building, nothing under $600. You’re looking, the all-in price is, I think we sold it for $117k all in, so you’re looking at about a 6% yield, okay? Very decent from a perspective of investment. Like I said, 50 square meters, open kitchen, reasonably good materials, needs a bit of a cleaning. You have some open space in front of you there, looking off into Osmanbey.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, non-controversial.

KEITH: Yeah, just one of those properties if you want to get the CBI done, very predictable rental yield. Here’s your bedroom.

LADISLAS MAURICE: Yeah, and easy to sell.

KEITH: Easy to liquidate as well.

How to contact Keith

LADISLAS MAURICE: Cool. Okay, so look, thanks, Keith for the overview. I wrote a whole article on the real estate market here in Istanbul, the neighborhoods to look at, the neighborhoods to avoid, some traps you should avoid. There’s a link below. There’s also a page that elaborates on the Citizenship by Investment program, how it works, all the details, the fees. And if you want to get in touch with Keith, there’s also a link below. Keith, thank you very much.

KEITH: Great, man. Good to see you again.

2 Comments

  1. Real Estate Services on August 12, 2025 at 07:56

    I’m buying for my children’s future.

    Reply
  2. hillside land Enugu on August 12, 2025 at 15:42

    Is it a good neighborhood?

    Reply

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