An advert perhaps but who's counting - complain to the management
Over a year ago I hatched a plan for the property market in Turkey, mainly through the despair of reading so many horror stories which, although relatively rare, were devastating to those caught up. I spoke with so many people, professionals and business people who admired my motivation and laughed at my proposals.
I have mentioned before that traditional ways to purchase here leave the buyer wide open to the potential for risk - where else would you send tens of thousands of pounds to a relative stranger, hope he will deliver what you believed you were buying, before having any ownership rights whatsoever? Why do builders insist on stage payments? Because without them they can't build your property. That means without you they can't finance the project, they can't raise finance any other way (from the bank for example) - in essence you agree to buy the property, they agree to build it for you then borrow money from you to do it! Up until a couple of years ago this worked fairly well - if they built it they'd sell it, but now things are levelling out the potential for financial failure is very real with builders and developers of all sizes. Maybe the very people you are tranferring your hard earned cash to. Knowing the market as I do, trust me when I say that if they are in financial difficulties and you send them a stage payment, the chances that it will be used for building your property are quite slight - there are more pressing requirements for that cash. I agree that in percentage terms such problems are relatively rare, but if it was your £60,000 in the abyss you would not care about what quantity go through without complication.
Laugh no more folks, 12 months on I have finalised our system, and we are ready to launch.
Using both a practice of UK solicitors (one of the biggest and most respected in Northern England) and a Turkish lawyer, we have devised a system by which property purchase in Turkey is ENTIRELY risk free. If the developer can't work to our system we don't list their projects, because it is an indication that without using YOUR money they can't build. To me, that indicates a risky financial position that they find themselves in.
No money is passed to the vendor (new or resale) until our lawyers have the Tapu in their hand. Not a single penny. All properties are inspected by us prior to our request that the funds be released, and a report is sent to lawyer and client.
As in the UK, a deposit is paid on exchange of contracts to the UK solicitors and is held in Escrow until completion. This will be between 10 and 30% of agreed purchase price. If the builder doesn't deliver, this is returned to the purchaser with accrued interest. All fees (taxes, Aegean Army checks, solicitor, notary etc) are paid on COMPLETION, so reinforcing the 100% risk free theme. If you don't reach completion you didn't pay anything up to that time.
We have also stepped up our commitment to the resale market. It is true that too many agents have turned their backs on this sector, mainly because of larger commission rates. Our opinion is quite different. To move the whole market you need to oil the resale market - there are a lot of sales on hold because the buyer needs to sell first. Furthermore, ignoring the resale market is just greedy - our opinion is that it is far better to make a sale and some commission than to pay people to sit and earn nothing.
To this end, we now offer commission rates payable by vendors of
2.5%, and introduce something again familiar to those in the UK - a sole agency rate of
1.75% - in doing this we hope to be able to offer the most comprehensive range available in the Fethiye region. As if that weren't enough (
) we also have addressed another major criticism of the resale market in Turkey - that being that agents add extra onto the price asked by the vendor - to compensate for the lower commission rates. How can we get round that particular matter? Easy - all resales are added by the vendor themselves, INCLUDING the price.
We hope to be taking on more staff shortly, and have already had to invest in a new office (next to what was the Kafeteriya opposite Aydin Pide) as a 'head office' sort of affair. The existing office will stay open too.
We have more or less finalised the range of projects we can list, having discussed our system with most of the developers locally. We will add them all over the next few days. What we need right now is for private vendors who would like to list to start adding their resales from now.
It may be interesting to share with you the fact that our system was met with a reception from many developers best described as 'cold'. This doesn't include those who fell off their chair or laughed uncontrollably. The funny thing is, most of them who declined must have thought it through for a day or two because they then contacted us to say they would like to be part of it.
If you think of ANY horror story concerning buying in Turkey, including the huge Bodrum scam, NONE of them could possibly happen using this system.
Finally, we have a new name. Turkey Property Centre will continue until all current business is done but we are
Assured EstatePlease check out our (empty!) website at
www.assuredestate.com - all comments very welcome.
No doubt we will be copied at least in part (nothing new to have one of my websites copied if course, not everyone can think of their own ideas) but it will take months, will mean no more sharp practices and I will feel warm that perhaps in a small way I made a difference
Very kind of you to read all that
