Is 2026 a good time to buy property in Turkey? A field assessment

This is the question I am asked most often, and to be honest it is framed wrongly. There is no single thing called "the market". Two people looking at the same listing at the same price today may be facing opposite conditions. What separates them is not the market but how they pay.

The Turkish Statistical Institute published August 2026 home sales data today. The headline is clear: sales fell 14.7 percent year on year. But the breakdown underneath the headline says far more than the headline itself. Below I open up the table first, then go through what it means for four different types of buyer.

Let me say this at the outset: this article does not tell you to buy now or to wait. Nobody can honestly make that statement, because nobody knows where prices will be tomorrow. The purpose here is to show which figures to look at when making the decision, and what those figures mean for which buyer.

Today's picture: sales falling, mortgages rising

In August, 127,410 homes changed hands across Turkey. In the same month last year the figure was 149,440. That is where the 14.7 percent decline comes from. This much is the part everyone is sharing.

Go into the breakdown and the picture changes.

Almost the entire decline is concentrated in the second-hand segment. New builds are close to flat at 4.5 percent. And the only growing item in the market is mortgaged sales.

The share of mortgaged sales in the total jumped accordingly. Last August that share was 13.8 percent; this year it is 17.4 percent. Over the first eight months the gap is starker still: between January and August, mortgaged sales rose 27.6 percent compared with the same period last year, while total sales fell 6.8 percent.

Growing in nominal terms, eroding in real terms

On the price side two separate facts are true at the same time, and most arguments come from confusing the two.

The Central Bank's House Price Index reached 236.8 in August 2026. That is a 0.9 percent rise on the previous month and 23.0 percent on the same month a year earlier. The sticker price keeps growing.

Over the same period annual consumer inflation was 31.51 percent. Put those two figures side by side and house prices are falling 6.5 percent in real terms. Homes are becoming more expensive in nominal terms, but because the purchasing power of money erodes faster, their real value is declining.

The picture is not uniform across the three largest cities. The annual rise was 26.3 percent in Istanbul, 24.8 percent in Ankara and 23.3 percent in Izmir, making Izmir the slowest of the three on an annual basis. Look at the monthly change, though, and the order reverses: in August, Istanbul rose 1.9 percent and Ankara 1.5 percent, while Izmir rose 2.7 percent, the fastest of the three. The national average that month was 0.9 percent.

Rent is eroding more slowly than prices

This part is skipped in most articles, yet for an investment decision it may be the most telling.

The Central Bank publishes a separate indicator for rents: the New Tenant Rent Index. It measures not the increase paid by a sitting tenant but the amount paid by a tenant newly renting a property. In August 2026 the index stood at 336.2, a nominal annual rise of 26.4 percent.

Adjusted for the same inflation rate, rent is falling 3.9 percent in real terms, against 6.5 percent for house prices. Both are eroding, but rent is eroding more slowly.

If you are buying with a mortgage: the band matters more than the price

For a buyer using a mortgage, the most important change of 2026 is not the interest rate but the loan-to-value regulation.

Board Decision 11364 of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency, dated 29 January 2026, removed the distinction between a first and a second home. Two things now determine the ratio you can borrow: the appraised value of the property and its energy class as stated on the energy performance certificate.

Where the table bites is at the band boundary. The ratio moves in steps, not gradually. On a class A home worth 5 million lira, a 90 percent ratio means a down payment of 500,000 lira. On a 5.1 million lira home in the same class, the ratio drops to 80 percent and the down payment climbs to 1,020,000 lira. A price difference of one hundred thousand lira asks another 520,000 lira out of your pocket.

That is why the first thing I ask a mortgage buyer is which band their down payment falls into. Every listing viewed without knowing the band is time you lose later.

The second issue is the energy performance certificate. Of two flats at the same price, the one with the higher energy class gives you ten or even twenty percentage points more borrowing capacity. In practice that means an older building requires a far larger down payment for the same money. Asking about the energy class is no longer an aesthetic curiosity; it is a direct down payment calculation.

On rates, pricing changes weekly, so I am not writing a fixed figure here. As of 16 September 2026, mortgage campaign rates on comparison platforms were running in a band of roughly 2.8 to 3.7 percent per month. Check the current rate before deciding.

If you are buying with cash

For a cash buyer the picture has improving and worsening sides at the same time.

The improving side: your competition is thinning out. The other-sales category, which covers cash and similar payments, contracted 18.3 percent year on year. When a seller sees a transaction that will close quickly, they become more open to negotiating. In a period when real prices are falling, that negotiating room genuinely exists.

The worsening side: the alternative return on your money. For a cash buyer the real cost is not interest but giving up the chance to deploy that money elsewhere. A purchase decision made without that comparison is incomplete. I do not run that calculation myself, as it moves into investment advice, but I do want buyers to run it with their financial adviser.

If you are buying your first home

For first-time buyers the decision is often reduced to "should I pay rent or an instalment". That comparison alone is incomplete, because there are hidden items on both sides.

Next to the instalment you need to add the service charge, property tax, compulsory earthquake insurance, home insurance and an annual maintenance allowance. Next to the rent you need to add the flexibility of moving and the fact that your down payment is not tied up.

Set against that, one concrete fact works in the first-time buyer's favour: while rent is down 3.9 percent in real terms, it is still up 26.4 percent in nominal terms. In other words, every year you remain a tenant the sum you pay keeps growing. On a fixed-instalment loan the sum stays the same and grows lighter year by year against inflation. That, rather than an expectation that prices will rise tomorrow, is the real logic of a mortgage for a first-time buyer.

If you are buying as an investment

For an investor in this period it is essential to think about the two sources of return separately.

Capital appreciation

Entering a market that is down 6.5 percent in real terms on the expectation of short-term capital gains is an expectation the data does not support. There is nominal growth but no real growth. For someone targeting a short-term buy and sell profit, today's picture is not favourable.

Rental income

The rent side, by contrast, is more resilient than prices. The rent index eroding more slowly than the price index works in the direction of improving rental yield. For a long-term, rent-focused investor the picture is more reasonable than it was a year ago.

There is also this. I often hear the view that foreign buyers are inflating prices, and the data does not support it. Between January and August 2026, 13,141 homes were sold to foreign nationals, 6.3 percent fewer than a year earlier. Total sales over the same period were 950,529. Sales to foreigners are therefore about 1.4 percent of the total, a share too small to explain nationwide price movements.

The cost of waiting, and when waiting is justified

I am writing this section from both sides, because writing it from one side would be steering.

The hidden cost of waiting is this: what falls while you wait is the real price, not the nominal one. The nominal sticker is up 23 percent year on year. A year from now the sum you pay will most likely be higher than it is today. You also keep paying rent while you wait, and loan-to-value bands and rate conditions may change. It is also worth noting that in the seasonally and calendar adjusted series, new build sales rose 3.5 percent and second-hand sales 0.7 percent on the previous month. While the annual decline continues, the monthly series has turned upward. I do not know whether that is durable, but it is in the table.

There are also cases where waiting is justified: if your down payment does not yet reach the next loan band, saving for a few more months to cross into it can earn you far more than the interest costs you. If your income is irregular or your job security uncertain, taking on a fixed instalment is wrong whatever the market does. And if supply is heavy in the area you are looking at and comparable properties are sitting unsold for long stretches, there is no reward for rushing.

What to check before deciding

This is the order I ask a buyer to follow.

1. Work out which loan band your down payment falls into. Viewing listings without knowing the band wastes time. If you are crossing a band boundary by a few hundred thousand lira, waiting a little to land inside the band makes a serious difference.
2. Ask for the class on the energy performance certificate. Of two flats at the same price, the higher energy class gives you more borrowing capacity. This is not a comfort detail; it is a down payment item.
3. Compare the instalment against the total monthly burden, not on its own. A comparison made without putting service charges, property tax, insurance and maintenance next to the instalment will mislead you.
4. Choose comparables from the same age band, not from a district average. The difference between two neighbouring streets is often larger than the difference between two districts.
5. Do not judge how long a property has been for sale by the listing date. Listing dates can be refreshed. Noting how many weeks you have been seeing the same listing is a more reliable indicator.
6. Check the title deed and the occupancy permit before making an offer. Without a building occupancy permit both the loan process and any future sale become harder.
7. Calculate rental yield on actual rent. An index gives direction; the decision is made on that property's real rent. Look at current tenancy agreements in the same building.
8. State upfront how long you intend to live there or hold it. The same property calls for different decisions for someone with a two-year horizon and someone with a ten-year one.

One last time: what I have written here is general information and a decision framework. I cannot tell you what the right answer is in your specific situation without knowing your income, your down payment and your horizon. If there is a property you are considering and you would like to discuss the figures through comparables rather than promises, write to me. I will tell you what works in your favour in a deal and what works against you.