When buying a house in Turkey, no document is more important than the “tapu,” or the title deed.
The tapu is the sole legal document that verifies the ownership of a particular property. It lists all the important information about the property and its owner(s), including the name(s), address, registry number, perceived value, etc.
As with most legal documents, there are some fees to pay in order to obtain the tapu. It should be noted that in Turkey the cost of the tapu is only marginally higher for foreigners when compared to Turkish citizens.
So, let’s break it down.
First, there is the title deed fee (“tapu harcı” in Turkish) which depends on the value of the property that’s being sold.
Under the law, it is 4% of the value of the property, and the buyer and the seller should equally split this fee, meaning they pay 2% each. However, if the parties come an agreement between themselves the share of the fee can be changed as long as the full amount is paid.
For instance, if the value of the property is 100,000 Turkish liras, the total cost of the title deed fee is TL 4,000.
Additionally, there is a circulating capital fee plus a service charge which together cost just under TL 200. Given there’s no other agreement in place, the buyer usually pays this amount.
Moreover, there are also some other “side” expenses that foreigners must go through during the process of receiving the title deed.
One of them is the required inspection of the property by a certified examiner, who will survey the property to make sure it’s up to standards and its value is appropriate. This step is specific to foreigners in order to protect them from possible fraud. The inspection usually costs at least TL 1,500.
The buyer must also submit an official translation of their passport approved by a Turkish notary office. It can be done by any notary in the country for a cost of less than TL 100.
The foreigners who do not know Turkish must also be accompanied by a sworn translator during the final stage of receiving the tapu – another requirement installed to protect the foreign investors the cost of which would depend on the translation services.
Then there is the compulsory earthquake insurance, known as DASK, which is not specific to foreigners. It’s hard to estimate the average cost of DASK since its price is calculated according to a number of factors. The insurers, among other things, take into account the age of the building, the size of the apartment/house (in square meters) and even the estimated risk of an earthquake in a given area of the city or the country. There is no way around the earthquake insurance as it’s necessary to be able to connect the utilities such as water and electricity.
And that’s pretty much it.
At the end of the day, the total cost of the tapu and tapu-related expenses for the buyer should come to around 3-4% of the value of the property they are purchasing.
