For Owners Living Outside Türkiye

Property management for owners who are not in Istanbul

Owning a flat here is straightforward until the day something needs a signature, a phone call in Turkish or a plumber before the water reaches the neighbour below. Management means someone stands in that gap: rent is checked on the day it is due, the legal increase is applied on the right month with the right index, repairs are authorised against a limit you set in advance, and you get a written statement whether or not anything happened. The whole service runs in English — the Turkish-language side, from notary notices to building management, stays on our side of the line.

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What's Covered

Six things that have to happen whether you are here or not

Finding the tenant is a separate job, and it sits on our services page. Everything below starts the day the tenant moves in and runs for as long as you want it to.

Rent collection and follow-up

The contractual payment day is checked against the account, not remembered vaguely. If nothing has arrived, the tenant hears from us the following morning — in writing, so the record exists if it is ever needed.

The annual increase and renewal

Every contract sits on a renewal calendar. We calculate the increase from the index figure that belongs to that month, prepare the notice in your name and serve it before the anniversary, not after.

Maintenance and repairs

A spending limit you set in advance decides what gets fixed immediately and what waits for your written approval. Emergencies that are actively causing damage are stopped first and reported the same day.

Reporting you do not have to ask for

A monthly statement on a fixed day, incident notes with photographs as things happen, and an annual summary of rent and documented expenses in time for the March filing period.

Arrears handled by the book

Late payment is escalated in the order Turkish law rewards — documented reminder, formal notice through a notary, then enforcement. Owners who let months slide informally lose the strongest leverage they had.

Vacancy and re-letting

When a tenant gives notice we photograph, price and re-list before the keys come back, so the search starts while the flat is still occupied rather than after it empties. The standard of the photography is visible in our portfolio.

Getting Started

Setting up, from wherever you are

Valuation and scope

We look at the property and the current comparables in the district, then agree in writing what is managed, what is reported and what the fee is — before anything begins.

Listing authorisation

If the flat needs letting or re-letting, Turkish regulation requires the registered owner to authorise the agency. It is done online through e-Devlet and withdrawn the same way whenever you choose.

Standing instructions

Your repair approval limit, your reporting day, the account rent is paid into, who we may contact and what we must never decide alone. Written down once, followed every month.

Power of attorney, only if needed

Collection, maintenance, notices and reporting run without one. A notarised power of attorney is arranged only when something genuinely has to be signed in your name.

Rent: what is collected, when, and how it reaches you

The tenancy contract fixes a payment day, and that day is the only one that matters. Rent in Türkiye is not collected in cash: tax rules require rental payments to be documented through a bank or PTT above a monthly threshold set by the Revenue Administration, and for commercial leases regardless of the amount. In practice every tenancy we manage pays by bank transfer with the month written in the reference.

Wherever possible, rent should land directly in your own Turkish bank account, not in ours. The paper trail then carries your name, it matches what the tax office already sees, and no third party sits between the tenant and your money. We hold view access or receive the confirmation, verify the amount against the contract on the due date, and flag a short payment as quickly as a missing one. Where an owner has no usable Turkish account yet, rent can be collected and passed on instead — but we would rather help you open the account than make that the permanent arrangement.

Two things travel alongside the rent and are checked with it. The deposit stays where the contract says it stays; it is not income, and it is not quietly spent on repairs during the tenancy. The aidat — the monthly building charge — is normally the tenant's to pay, but under Turkish flat-ownership rules the building can ultimately pursue the registered owner for unpaid dues. That is why the aidat status appears on your statement every month even though it is not your bill.

The annual increase, and who signs the renewal notice

For residential tenancies the increase at renewal is capped at the twelve-month average of the consumer price index (TÜFE) published monthly by TurkStat. The temporary statutory cap that applied between 2022 and mid-2024 has expired; the index-average rule governs again. Commercial leases are reviewed against their own terms.

The mistake foreign owners make most often is arithmetic, not law: the applicable figure is the one belonging to the month the contract renews, not the month you happen to think about it. A renewal in March uses the March basis even if the conversation happens in June, and asking late does not entitle you to the higher intervening figure. You can check the current rate yourself with our rent increase calculator.

The notice goes out in your name, because you are the landlord and we are not. Three routes, all of which we have used:

You approve the wording by e-mail and return a signed scan; we serve it and keep proof of delivery.
We hold a power of attorney and sign for you, then send you the served copy.
The lease already contains a valid index-linked escalation clause, in which case the increase operates by contract on the renewal date and the notice is confirmatory.

For a cooperative tenant, e-mail or registered post is enough. Where a dispute looks plausible, it goes through a notary, because proof of service is what the argument will eventually turn on.

One structural point that surprises almost every owner abroad: a residential tenancy does not end because its term ended. It extends automatically, year after year — the tenant may leave by giving notice shortly before the term expires, but the landlord cannot terminate simply because the year is up. Ending a tenancy requires a statutory ground, such as a genuine housing need of the owner or their immediate family, substantial reconstruction, a valid eviction undertaking signed after handover, or repeated documented late payment. Only after ten years of extensions does the law give the landlord an unconditional exit at the end of an extension year, on notice. Where a long-standing tenancy has drifted far below market, the route is a rent determination case rather than a renewal letter, and it becomes available once the tenancy is past its fifth year. We will tell you which of these applies to your flat, including when the honest answer is that none of them does yet.

Maintenance when you are asleep

The whole problem of remote maintenance is authorisation. If every dripping tap needs an answer from a time zone eight hours away, the tenant learns to stop reporting things — and unreported problems are the expensive kind. So the limit is set once, before anything breaks.

Situation	What happens	What you do
Cost below your approval limit	Fixed immediately by a tradesman we have used before	Nothing — invoice and photos appear on the monthly statement
Cost above your approval limit	Photographs and at least one quote sent to you, with a second where the job is large enough to justify it	Reply in writing; work starts only after that, and the tenant is given a realistic date rather than "waiting for the owner"
Active damage — water escaping, gas, no heating in winter	Stopped first, because the cost of waiting exceeds the cost of the repair	Told the same day, with the invoice and photographs to follow
Improvement rather than repair — new kitchen, flooring, renovation	Costed and proposed, never started	Decide; this is your capital, not a maintenance item

Who bears the cost follows Turkish tenancy law and then the contract: routine upkeep and minor repairs arising from ordinary use fall to the tenant, while work needed to keep the property fit for its purpose, and defects the tenant did not cause, fall to the landlord. Where the line is blurred we say so before spending rather than after. Settlement is agreed at the start — either from rent held back before transfer, or invoiced to you separately — and every invoice is kept, which matters if you deduct actual expenses in your annual return rather than the flat-rate allowance.

One limit worth stating plainly: a let property is the tenant's home. Neither you nor we may enter it without the tenant's agreement, and appointments for repairs and viewings are made around that, not around our convenience.

What you receive, and how often

When	What arrives
Monthly, on a fixed day	Rent received and the date it landed, any shortfall, aidat status, any spend with its invoice
Within the day it happens	Incident note with photographs: a repair, a complaint, a notice from the building, anything a tenant has raised
Well before each contract anniversary	Renewal memo: the applicable index figure, the resulting rent, what comparable flats are actually letting for, and a recommendation
Annually, before the March filing period	Summary of gross rent month by month and documented expenses with receipts, in a form your accountant can use

The renewal memo is the one that earns its place. It sometimes recommends holding a good tenant below the maximum increase, because a reliable payer who looks after the flat is worth more over several years than the difference. If your current arrangement — a relative, the building's caretaker, the agent who sold you the flat — cannot produce this paper trail, what you have is not management. Our guide for remote owners sets out the same twelve-month cycle from the owner's side.

When a tenant stops paying: the actual sequence

Almost every case ends at step one or two. The reason the later steps matter is that skipping the early ones quietly destroys them.

The day after the due date. The tenant is contacted, asked for a specific date, and the exchange is put in writing. Most late payments are a salary date or a bank problem and resolve here.
A formal written demand through a notary. This is not aggression, it is evidence. Turkish law gives the tenant a payment period once such a demand is served, and two justified written payment warnings within the same lease year give the landlord grounds to bring an eviction action at the end of that year. An owner who lets late months pass with nothing but phone calls has thrown that away.
Enforcement proceedings. An icra takibi pursues the debt itself, and for a qualifying lease the same route can seek eviction alongside payment. The deposit is set against the arrears at the appropriate point, not spent early.
Court. An eviction case is heard by the civil court of peace for the district where the property sits. A valid eviction undertaking signed after handover, if one exists, changes both the route and the timetable.

What never happens is self-help. No changing the locks, no cutting the water or electricity, no removing belongings. Eviction in Türkiye is carried out through the enforcement office and nowhere else; a landlord who takes matters into their own hands loses the case they were winning and may face criminal exposure on top of it.

Be prepared for the timetable to be measured in months rather than weeks, and for it to depend on the court's list rather than on anyone's diligence. Anyone who promises you a date is guessing. There are also cases where the arithmetic favours a negotiated exit — a deposit forgone, a month waived, the keys back in weeks — over a case that runs on the court's timetable, and we will say so when we think that is the position.

Power of attorney: what it lets us do, and what it should not

You do not need one to start. Collecting rent, chasing it, organising repairs, corresponding with the tenant and reporting to you all run without any authority beyond the management agreement. A power of attorney becomes necessary only when something must be signed in your name — title deed transactions, certain notary acts, utility subscriptions and transfers, dealings with the tax office or the municipality, or instructing enforcement and court steps.

There are three ways to grant one from abroad:

At a Turkish consulate in your country of residence. The document is issued in Turkish and is ready to use here — usually the simplest route.
Before a local notary, then apostilled under the Hague Convention, translated by a sworn translator and certified at a Turkish notary. Countries outside the Convention go through consular legalisation instead.
At a Turkish notary on any visit you happen to make, which is normally a single appointment.

Two details catch people out. A power of attorney used for title deed work must carry your photograph and must name the transaction — a general phrase does not carry a sale. And the scope is yours to limit: ask for the narrowest authority that covers what you actually need. A management power that permits collection, notices and utility subscriptions is a different document from one that permits a sale, and we would rather you granted a narrow one and returned later for a second than handed anyone blanket authority over your property. It can be revoked at a notary at any time.

Decisions that stay yours

Delegation is not the same as surrender. These are never made on your behalf, whatever authority exists on paper:

The asking rent, and the figure at which you will actually accept
Which applicant becomes your tenant — we screen income, references and payment history and bring you a shortlist; the choice is yours
Whether to renew, and at what rent, including the decision to hold a good tenant below the permitted increase
Any spend above the limit you set
Furnishing, renovation and structural work
Whether to start proceedings against a tenant, or settle
Whether to sell, when, and at what price
Whether to keep working with us at all — the agreement is terminable on its written terms, and the listing authorisation can be withdrawn on e-Devlet in about two minutes without asking us

What this service does not cover

The gaps are worth knowing before you sign rather than after.

We are not tax advisers or accountants. You get the figures and the receipts in a usable form; the annual rental income declaration is filed by you or your accountant through the Revenue Administration.
We are not a law firm. Court and enforcement steps are conducted by a lawyer. We prepare the file, coordinate, attend where useful and can point you to counsel, but the retainer is between you and them.
We do not move money out of Türkiye or convert currency. Rent reaches a Turkish account; what happens after that is between you and your bank, and we give no advice on when or whether to transfer.
We do not guarantee occupancy or a rent level. No agency honestly can. A valuation is a range built from comparables, and a market can move against it.
We do not run short-term or holiday letting. Since 2024 that is a separately regulated activity in Türkiye requiring a permit and the consent of the other flat owners in the building. This service is built for long-term tenancies.
We are not your building management. We deal with them, chase the aidat and report what the assembly decides, but the vote on your flat belongs to you unless you have specifically authorised otherwise.

Everything on this page is a description of how the service runs and of general Turkish practice, not legal or tax advice for your particular property. Where the answer turns on your specific contract, we will tell you that too.

FAQ

Questions owners abroad actually ask

Do I have to come to Istanbul to set this up?

No. The valuation can be done from photographs, measurements and the address; the scope and fee are agreed in writing by e-mail; and the listing authorisation is granted online from anywhere, provided you hold a Turkish identity number or a foreign identity number issued with your residence permit or property purchase. A power of attorney is arranged only if something must be signed in your name, and it can be granted at a Turkish consulate where you live.

Do I need a Turkish bank account?

In practice yes, because rental payments have to be documented through a bank or PTT rather than handed over in cash. Opening one requires a tax number and identification, and the bank sets its own conditions. We can tell you what other owners have been asked for, but we do not open accounts on anyone's behalf.

Can you take over a property that already has a tenant?

Yes, and it is common. We read the existing contract, establish the renewal date and the basis on which increases have been applied, introduce ourselves to the tenant in writing, and give you an honest reading of whether the rent has fallen behind the market — and of what can lawfully be done about it, and when.

What happens to the tenancy if I decide to sell?

A sale does not end a tenancy. The buyer steps into the existing contract and inherits the tenant, which affects both the price and the pool of buyers. A new owner who genuinely needs the property for their own use has a route to seek possession, but it runs to strict deadlines from the date of acquisition. Selling is a separate service — see what we do for owners — and the decision, including whether to sell with the tenant in place, is yours.

What does management cost?

The fee depends on the property and on how much of the list above you want us to carry, and it is agreed in writing before anything starts. We quote after the valuation rather than before, because quoting before means guessing. No arrangement here locks you in — you can end it on its written terms and withdraw the listing authorisation yourself.

How quickly do you respond when something breaks?

The tenant has a local number to call and does not wait for your time zone. Anything actively causing damage is dealt with first and reported to you the same day; anything else follows the approval limit you set at the start, and you are told when the tradesman is booked rather than after the fact.

First Step

Start with what the flat is actually worth

Before management makes sense, you need a realistic figure — what the property should be letting for today, and what it would sell for if you would rather exit. The valuation is free, it comes with no obligation, and it is the conversation from which everything else follows. Send photographs, the address and the size; we reply the same day.