Most of the foreign money that comes into Turkish housing goes into buildings that do not yet exist, and most of the litigation files on my desk about Turkish property began with a reservation form, a bank transfer and a rendering. The two facts are connected. Off-plan buying is not unlawful or unwise; it is the normal way new housing is sold here, and Turkish law gives the buyer more protection than most foreign buyers realise. The protection has three layers that do not talk to each other: the Consumer Protection Law, which governs the contract and its clocks; the land registry, which decides what you actually own while the building rises; and the tax law, which offers a non-resident buyer a VAT exemption with a string attached that was lengthened in 2022 and that several websites, including until today one of ours, still describe at its old length. This page sets out all three, from the statutes and the regulation as they read in September 2026.
Sources, checked 9 September 2026. Consumer Protection Law No. 6502, Articles 40 to 46 and 77(5) and (8); Regulation on Pre-Paid Housing Sales (Official Gazette 29188, 27 November 2014, as amended to 1 October 2022), Articles 5 to 16; Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098, Article 237; Land Registry Law No. 2644, Article 26; Condominium Law No. 634, Articles 3 and 10; Value Added Tax Law No. 3065, Article 13(i) as amended by Law 7394 of 8 April 2022; Law No. 6306, Article 6(10) and (13).
Which contracts the consumer law covers
Article 40(1) of Law 6502 defines a pre-paid housing sale as a contract in which the consumer undertakes to pay the price of a residential property in advance, in full or by instalments, and the seller undertakes to transfer or deliver the property after all or part of the price has been paid. Two words in that definition decide whether the rest of this page applies to you. "Residential" excludes offices and shops. "Consumer" is defined elsewhere in the law as a person acting for purposes outside a trade or profession, and it includes legal persons acting for such purposes; a foreign investor who buys through a company set up to hold and let property is on the wrong side of that line, and the developer's lawyers will say so when the dispute arrives. If you want the protections below, buy as a natural person, or accept that your protection is the contract you negotiated and the general law of obligations.
Clock zero: no contract before the building permit
Article 40(3) is short: no pre-paid housing sale contract may be made with consumers before the building permit has been issued. Article 41(2) adds that until a valid contract exists the seller may not ask the consumer for any payment under any name, or for any document that puts the consumer in debt. Article 77(5) fines a breach of the permit rule, and fines late delivery separately for each home not delivered; the figures printed in the statute are base amounts indexed each year.
This is the rule the reservation form breaks. A developer who takes a "reservation deposit" against a project that has no permit, on a one-page form that promises a flat at a fixed price, has taken money the law says may not be asked for, under a contract the law says may not be made. The consumer's remedy is real, but it is a remedy against a developer who has already shown how it treats the statute. My practice is simple: no money leaves the client's account until I have seen the building permit with a date on it and the register entry for the parcel.
Form: the register or the notary, nothing else
Article 41(1) requires the pre-paid sale either to be registered at the land registry or, where it is a promise of sale, to be made before a notary in the notary's own drafted form. Article 237 of the Code of Obligations, which is older and general, makes the same point from the other side: a promise to sell immovable property is invalid unless made in official form. Article 41(1) then adds a protection that matters when the developer later wants out: the seller may not rely on the invalidity of a defective form against the consumer.
The register route is stronger than the notary route, and since 2018 it is available earlier than most buyers think. Article 10 of the Condominium Law, as amended that year, allows the developer building under a construction-for-shares contract or a notarised division agreement to have the construction servitude established by the administration on the approved project without the landowners' signatures. Once the servitude exists, your unit can be transferred to you on the register as kat irtifakı while the building is still a hole in the ground, and Article 44 of the consumer law treats that registration together with possession as delivery. What kat irtifakı is, and what stands between it and a finished title, is on the title deed types page.
Where the register route is not offered, the notarised promise of sale should be annotated on the title. Article 26 of the Land Registry Law allows a notarised promise of sale or a construction-for-shares contract to be annotated at the request of either party, and says the annotation is deleted ex officio if no sale or servitude is registered within five years of the annotation. An annotated promise binds whoever acquires the parcel afterwards; an unannotated one is a claim against the developer's estate. Five years is also, not by coincidence, longer than the forty-eight months the developer has to deliver.
One check the notary does not make and the registry does. The rules on which foreigners may acquire which property, described on the nationality and zones page, are applied when the transfer is registered, not when the promise is signed. A notarised promise of sale for a home that the registry will later refuse to transfer to a person of your nationality, or in a zone closed to foreign acquisition, is a valid contract for a transfer that cannot happen.
The form the developer must hand you the day before
Article 5 of the regulation requires a pre-contractual information form, in at least twelve-point type, to be given to the consumer at least one day before the contract is made, on paper or on a permanent data carrier. It must state the seller's identity, the property's specifications, the total price and any interest, the rights of withdrawal and termination, the delivery date, the security provided for the project and the date of the building permit. Articles 6 and 7 carry the same content into the contract itself, together with the payment schedule and the consumer dispute route. A form that lists the permit date and the security is a form that can be checked; a developer who cannot produce one has told you something before you have paid anything.
The regulation also deals with the project that changes after you sign. Changes to the project must be notified in writing, and the consumer may withdraw within one month of the notice without cost, unless the change was required by law or by force majeure. The clause matters in Turkey, where a floor added by a plan revision or a pool removed to meet a setback are ordinary events between signature and delivery.
Security: the thirty-unit rule
Article 42 of the law requires sellers of projects above a size set by the Ministry to obtain building completion insurance, or another security the Ministry accepts, before pre-paid sales begin. Article 12 of the regulation sets the size at thirty housing units and lists four forms the security may take: building completion insurance on terms set by the insurance regulator; a definitive bank guarantee covering the seller's unperformed obligations; a progress-payment system in which the consumer's payments sit in a blocked bank account and are released against verified construction stages; or a linked-credit arrangement in which the credit amount stands as security and the seller secures the remainder. Article 42(2) puts insurance indemnities and securities outside the developer's bankruptcy or liquidation estate and beyond attachment. Article 77(8) gives a seller who has not provided security one month to cure and then fines it, again on an indexed base figure.
Three consequences follow. In a project of thirty units or more, ask which of the four securities exists and obtain the document; the information form must name it. In a project of fewer than thirty units, the law provides no security at all, and the protection must be built into the contract: payments staged against registration of the servitude, a blocked account, or a bank guarantee the developer agrees to procure because you asked. And in a project where the developer says the security "is being arranged", remember that the statute requires it before sales begin, not before delivery.
Withdrawal and termination: fourteen days, twenty-four months
Article 43 gives the consumer fourteen days from the contract to withdraw without reason and without penalty; notice sent within the period is enough, and the seller bears the burden of proving the consumer was told of the right. Where the purchase is financed by a linked loan, the loan takes effect only when the withdrawal period ends, and the lender may charge nothing during it.
Article 45 is the provision foreign buyers most often do not know they have. Within twenty-four months of the contract the consumer may terminate without giving any reason. The seller may then claim the taxes and fees it actually incurred on the sale or the promise, plus compensation capped by the age of the contract: up to two per cent of the price in the first three months, four per cent from three to six months, six per cent from six to twelve, and eight per cent from twelve to twenty-four. Nothing at all is payable where the seller has failed to perform, where the consumer has died or permanently lost the ability to earn, or where the seller refused a proposal to convert the contract into an ordinary instalment sale; the regulation adds the case of a property sold to more than one buyer. Whatever is owed back to the consumer must be returned within one hundred and eighty days of the termination notice reaching the seller. A buyer who signed in a strong market and watches the developer fall behind has, for two years, a statutory exit at a known price.
Delivery: forty-eight months, and what counts as delivery
Article 44, as amended in 2022, requires delivery within the period promised in the contract and in any event within forty-eight months of the contract date. Earlier texts said thirty-six months, and older guides still repeat the shorter figure; the statute now says forty-eight. The same article defines delivery for this purpose as the registration of the construction servitude in the consumer's name together with the transfer of possession.
That definition is the trap inside the protection. A developer who registers kat irtifakı in your name and hands you the keys has delivered under the consumer law, and the forty-eight-month clock is satisfied, even if the building has no occupancy certificate and the flat cannot be connected to the mains. The consumer clock stops; the zoning clock keeps running, and it is described on the title deed types page. A contract that defines delivery as "delivery under Article 44" has given the developer that door. A contract that defines it as "delivery with the occupancy certificate issued and the condominium title registered" has closed it, and developers sign such clauses when they intend to obtain the certificate.
What the consumer law does not do
It does not protect the company buyer, as noted above. It does not reach the landowner's share in a construction-for-shares project: where the developer builds on someone else's land against a share of the flats, the units you buy come either from the developer's share or from the landowner's, and the two sellers have different rights and different exposures to each other's default. In projects run under the transformation law, Article 6(13) of Law 6306 limits the developer's sales of its own units to ten points below the certified completion percentage unless every owner consents, and Article 6(10) shields the parcel from the developer's creditors until the servitude is established; both are described on the earthquake law page. And it does not turn a developer's insolvency into your money: if the developer fails, your claim is a claim in the estate, the completion insurance or bank guarantee is what stands between you and a dividend, and the annotated promise or the registered servitude is what stands between you and the developer's other creditors. The remedies when a project fails, including the mandatory mediation step, are on the property fraud and recourse page.
The VAT exemption and its three-year string
New housing sold by a developer carries VAT at the reduced or the general rate, split at one hundred and fifty square metres of net area. Article 13(i) of the VAT Law exempts the first delivery of housing or office units to three classes of buyer, provided the price is brought into Turkey in foreign currency: foreign natural persons not settled in Turkey; companies whose legal and business seat is abroad and which earn no income in Turkey through a permanent establishment or representative; and Turkish citizens who have lived abroad for more than six months under a work or residence permit, other than those the Income Tax Law treats as resident. The exemption applies at delivery, which for an off-plan purchase is the developer's delivery of the finished unit, and the communiqué sets the timing of the foreign-currency transfers around the invoice.
The string is in the same paragraph. Since Law 7394 of 8 April 2022, a unit acquired under the exemption that is disposed of within three years triggers payment of the VAT that was not collected, with deferral interest under the public receivables law, by the person disposing of it, before the land registry transaction. Before 2022 the period was one year, and the one-year figure survives on many pages; it is wrong. The paragraph also makes the buyer jointly liable with the developer for the tax, the tax loss penalty and default interest if the exemption was applied to a buyer who did not qualify, which is why the developer's paperwork on your residence status matters to you and not only to the developer. The step-by-step conditions are on the VAT exemption guide; for a buyer who intends to sell within three years the exemption is a deferral, not a saving, and should be priced as one.
Two further interactions with the exemption are worth a sentence each. A buyer who later uses the property for citizenship by investment is already under a three-year no-sale annotation, described on the citizenship by real estate page, so the two periods run together. And a buyer who intends to let the unit under the tourism letting law is not affected by the exemption at all, but should read the short-term rental page before choosing a building whose neighbours must vote.
The clocks on one page
| Clock | Length | Runs from | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earliest lawful contract or payment | Not before the building permit | Permit date | Law 6502 Art. 40(3), 41(2) |
| Pre-contractual information form | At least 1 day before signing | Contract date | Regulation Art. 5 |
| Withdrawal without cost | 14 days | Contract date | Law 6502 Art. 43 |
| Withdrawal after a notified project change | 1 month | Notice of the change | Regulation |
| Termination without reason, capped compensation | 24 months | Contract date | Law 6502 Art. 45 |
| Refund after termination | 180 days | Notice reaching the seller | Law 6502 Art. 45(3) |
| Delivery | Contract period, at most 48 months | Contract date | Law 6502 Art. 44 |
| Annotation of a notarised promise of sale | 5 years | Annotation date | Land Registry Law Art. 26 |
| VAT exemption holding period | 3 years | Acquisition | VAT Law Art. 13(i) |
Before the deposit: the checks in order
- The building permit, with its date, and the parcel's register entry, before any payment under any name (Articles 40(3) and 41(2)).
- Whether you are buying as a consumer, and if not, what the contract gives you instead.
- The form of the contract: register transfer of kat irtifakı, or notarised promise of sale with an annotation under Article 26 of the Land Registry Law; nothing on the developer's letterhead.
- The pre-contractual form under Article 5 of the regulation, with the permit date and the security named on it.
- The security for a project of thirty units or more, as a document; the substitute you negotiate for a smaller one.
- The delivery clause: forty-eight months is the statutory ceiling, and delivery should be defined by the occupancy certificate, not by the servitude and the keys.
- Your exit: fourteen days without cost, twenty-four months at the statutory scale, and the grounds on which nothing is payable.
- The VAT position: whether you qualify under Article 13(i), how the foreign currency will be documented, and whether you can hold for three years.
- The register checks that apply to any purchase, including the ownership rules for your nationality, on the general buying guide and the due diligence page.
Whose side we are on, and how we are paid
Off-plan sales are sold by people paid on signature. The agent's commission, the sales office's target and the developer's cash flow all depend on the reservation form being signed today and the deposit arriving tomorrow; none of them depends on the permit existing, the security being in place or the delivery clause being honest. That is not an accusation. It is a description of who is in the room when a foreign buyer is told the flat "will be gone by Friday".
We take no commission from developers, agents or lenders, in any form, on any file. The fee you pay us is our only income from your matter, and it does not rise if you sign. Because our position does not move with the sale, telling you that the permit does not yet exist, that the project is four units short of the security threshold, or that the delivery clause has been written around the occupancy certificate, costs us nothing to say.
One boundary, stated plainly. We are lawyers, not licensed investment advisers and not engineers. We do not tell you whether the project will be worth more when it is finished, and we do not assess the developer's balance sheet. What we protect is the legal position: the form of the contract, the security, the clocks and the exits the law already gives you.
Before you reserve
Send us the project name, the developer's name and whatever you have been asked to sign. We will tell you whether a permit exists, which form the contract may lawfully take, what security the project must carry, and what your delivery clause should say. If you have already paid on a reservation form, send that too; the fourteen days and the twenty-four months are counted from the contract, and the contract may not be what you think it is. Our Turkish property work is described on the Turkey real estate page.
What this page does not settle
The detailed conditions of the VAT exemption in the implementing communiqué, including the timing of foreign-currency transfers, are on the separate VAT page. The rights of buyers of office units, who are outside the pre-paid housing rules, and of buyers who purchase from a landowner rather than a developer in a construction-for-shares project, are not covered. Enforcement against an insolvent developer is a litigation subject with its own page.
