Real Estate
A highly complex field: Consulting with regard to real estate law requires a broad range of legal and commercial know-how. Whether it is acquisition or sale, development or administration, utilisation or financing of real estate, we advise you in all aspects relating to real estate: From real estate and building law to corporate and tax law and the rules on the acquisition of real estate by foreigners.
The focus is always on your interests and the real estate project with its specific risk structure. Structures that minimise risks are the basis for successful real estate projects. We take the respective special features into account and find the optimum individual solutions for you. With complex and international real estate transactions, we work together with our partner firms within the Schindhelm Alliance. Seamlessly, flexibly, efficiency and precisely tailored to your requirements.
Whether it is purchase, tenancy, leasehold or leasing. Whether it is a building contract, architect contract or general contractor contract. Here, it is precisely about the details for which years of experience in real estate law are required.
Even when it is our goal to avoid conflicts right from the outset with the drafting of a corresponding contract, our consulting services do not end in the case of a dispute. We represent your interests before the (arbitration) courts, including the independent proceedings for the taking of evidence.
Acquisition of Real Estate by Foreigners in Turkey
The acquisition of real estate by foreign individuals and legal entities in Turkey is governed by a separate regime based on the principle of reciprocity and the specific restrictions of the Land Registry Act. In practice, most delays arise not from the purchase agreement but from the preparation of documents and the approval stage prior to registration. We therefore handle the entire process as a whole, from the compilation of documents to representation before the land registry office.
Tenancy Law
Turkish tenancy law protects tenants considerably more strongly than German or Austrian law: rent increases are capped by statute, and termination by the landlord is possible only on exhaustively listed grounds. Experience shows that most disputes between foreign tenants and landlords arise from contracts drafted without knowledge of these particularities. The drafting of commercial and residential leases, rent adjustment negotiations and eviction proceedings form the core of our work in this area.
Construction Contracts and Urban Renewal
The construction-for-land-share contract (kat karşılığı inşaat sözleşmesi), under which the landowner receives finished units in return for land shares, is a feature specific to Turkish law, and most disputes arise from insufficiently drafted clauses protecting the landowner. Urban renewal proceedings, with the determination of structural risk and the decision on reconstruction, also directly affect condominium owners living abroad. We represent landowners and condominium owners from contract negotiation through to the completion of the reconstruction process.
Focus areas of our range of consulting services
- Acquisition and disposal of individual properties and property portfolios in Turkey and abroad (asset and share deals, sale & leaseback transactions)
- Acquisition of real estate by foreign individuals and legal entities (statutory restrictions, military restricted and security zone checks, representation before the land registry office)
- Due diligence analysis of real estate, property projects and real estate companies (offices, production facilities, hotels, logistics centres, project developments, etc.)
- Drafting of contracts and tax-optimised structuring of real estate transactions
- Tenancy and leasehold law (commercial and residential leases, rent adjustment and eviction), leasing
- Construction and zoning law (construction-for-land-share contracts, general contractor contracts, building contracts, architect contracts)
- Condominium law and urban renewal proceedings
- Building lease
- Land and land registry law
- Mortgages and real estate security, enforcement against real estate
- Inherited real estate and land registry proceedings for foreign heirs
- Representation before (arbitration) courts
