Apartments

We stayed four nights in a place at Koza Mustafafasa, which is located between the Airport and the Aksaray station. The apartment was a 3+1, meaning a three bedroom and a livingroom apartment and was in the range of 780lira/month. The area is a central one for its surroundings, with a bunch of little shops, stores and restaurants of all kinds. Every living necessity can be met in that neighbourhood.
We met our first real estate agent on the recommendation of my current employer. You’d figure that would be a solid lead. Not so unfortunately. The older gentleman was quick to give us high prices and not so quick to show any of the apartments around the neighbourhood. It took us a whole two days to see one apartment. We were to meet him a day after our initial meeting to see another place but that was cancelled and postponed onto another day. Luckily our resourcefulness hadn’t abandoned us just yet and on the way home we stopped randomly at a real estate office we happened to be passing. During the next hour and a half we were taken to 3 different apartments in a car, which didn’t happen with the first real estate agent, and saw apartments ranging from 900 to 750 lira.
We signed a contract the next day. Even though the apartment rent was initially pitched to us as being 700 YTL (lira), we ended up signing up for 750YTL since that apparently was already a bargain. The economy isn’t at its best at the moment, so we were told, and the original rent of 950YTL/month was sliced down to 750YTL/month.
Canada has its security deposit, which usually consists of a one or two month’s rent advance. In Korea owners demand security deposits in the round amounts of between $2500 up $80,000, in which case the rent is much diminished or even completely removed and all one has to worry about paying are the utilities. A very convenient system if you have a decent sum saved up. Turkey compares to Canada in its security deposit arrangements. Ours was a one month’s advance.
There is also the real estate agent fee, which tends to be from 12% and up, of a year’s rent on the rented apartment. In our case that would have been 750YTL.
750 x 12 = 9000
9000 x 12 = ........you get the picture
We did, however, manage to bargain that down to 650YTL. The man was either feeling generous towards us or he made sure that the caretaker here would profit on every step off of our ignorance and a lack in the Turkish language. I guess we’ll never know.
One of the good things that came from this was, besides us getting our own place, was getting to know one of the boys working at real estate office. Firat 22 was the one who took us to see the apartments and came over a couple of days later with a bottle of Turkish Vodka and Redbull, the mix to drink here in the Nightclubs of Istanbul, and we had a merry little evening of trying to understand one another with the minimal of Turkish and English.


If you have any questions regarding living in Istanbul or the city in general, just leave it in the comment section. I will try and do my best to answer your question.