Managing it yourself versus professional management
Letting a home is not a few hours a year; it is a task list spread across every month. The decision is who does the list. The table shows what happens under each option for each item; which is “better” depends on your time, your distance from Istanbul and how many flats you own.
| Task | If you manage it | Under professional management |
|---|---|---|
| Finding a tenant | Listing, calls, viewings, negotiation; you check ID and income yourself | Screening is standard: ID, income, employer confirmation, references and the credit and enforcement records the candidate supplies; lease and inventory templates are ready |
| Collection | Checking the account every month; calling the tenant yourself when late | Request on the lease’s rent day, a written procedure when late; notice and enforcement from one team |
| Repairs | Finding a contractor, getting a price, checking the work; hard from a distance | Vetted contractor network; approval by amount threshold; photographed report |
| Tax, DASK, dues | You write the dates in your own calendar; a fine if missed | On a due-date calendar; the return prepared by our team |
| Annual increase | You find the CPI rate and negotiate with the tenant | Calculation and negotiation in advance; approval stays with you |
| Cost | No management fee; time and error cost are yours | A set percentage of rent; deductible in the return under the actual-expense method |
| Control | Full control; full responsibility | Visibility through an approval mechanism and a monthly statement; decisions still yours |
Three questions to ask: Are you in Turkey? Do you have more than one flat? Is there someone who will pick up the phone at 11 p.m. for a leak? If the answer to all three is no, most of the work can be handed over. Tenant screening has a hard limit: access to enforcement files is confined to the parties to the file (Enforcement and Bankruptcy Code, Arts. 8 and 8/a), and credit records are covered by banking secrecy (Banking Law No. 5411, Art. 73). No third party can look these up; what can be done is for the candidate to supply their own e-Devlet extract or their own Findeks credit report. A criminal record is special-category personal data and is not asked for in a tenancy (Data Protection Law No. 6698, Art. 6).
Long-term versus furnished mid-term
Long-term letting is renting an empty or lightly furnished flat for a year or more under the residential rules of the Code of Obligations. Furnished mid-term is renting a fully furnished flat for more than one hundred days at a time, mostly to foreign employees, academics or people on temporary assignment.
That threshold comes from Law No. 7464: letting a home for up to one hundred days counts as tourism letting and requires a permit from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, a decision taken unanimously by every unit owner in the building, and a plaque at the entrance (Arts. 2 and 3). Lettings of more than one hundred days at a time fall outside the Law (Art. 1(3)). That is not a blanket exemption: if the same home is let more than four times within a year of the first contract on contracts longer than one hundred days, an administrative fine of one million Turkish lira applies (Art. 4(1)(g)). Mid-term letting therefore also means tracking how many times a home is let in a year. Nightly and weekly lets are outside this guide.
| Criterion | Long-term (unfurnished) | Furnished mid-term |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly rent | Lower | Higher; furniture and services included in the price |
| Vacancy | One turnover a year; short gaps | Two or three turnovers a year; empty days and cleaning at each |
| Upfront investment | None or little | Furniture, appliances, textiles, internet; depreciation |
| Wear and maintenance | Utilities on the tenant; major repairs on the owner | Wear and replacement of contents on the owner; frequent inventories |
| Legal framework | Residential lease rules; eviction rules apply in full | Same rules; tenant protections apply even with a short term |
| Tenant profile | Families, long-term employees, students | Foreign employees, temporary assignees, families moving out during a renovation |
| Management load | Low | High: frequent move-ins and move-outs, inventories, cleaning, bills |
The return on mid-term should be worked out after empty days and management load are deducted; demand is steadier in central districts where foreign employees and temporary assignees concentrate.
The annual cost of leaving it empty
An empty home is not “free”; it produces costs while earning nothing. To work out the annual cost, add up the items below; figures are not given here because they depend on the property.
- Lost rent: monthly rent × months empty. This is the largest item.
- Dues: paid in full even for an empty flat (Law No. 634, Art. 20).
- Property tax: paid by the owner with or without a tenant (Law No. 1319, Art. 3).
- DASK and home insurance: annual premiums continue; some policies add conditions for unoccupied homes.
- Fixed subscription charges: electricity, water, gas and internet keep charging standing fees unless closed; reopening costs money.
- Neglect: leaks and odours in unused plumbing, damp and mould, frozen pipes in winter; noticed later and repaired at a higher cost in an empty home.
- Security and checks: the time or fee of someone looking in periodically.
- Opportunity cost: what the rent would have earned if invested elsewhere.
The usual reason for leaving a home empty is “fear of a bad tenant”. That fear is a manageable risk through tenant screening, an eviction undertaking and a guarantor; the tools are explained in the tenancy law guide.
Sources
To see which of these tasks you would hand over and which you would keep, across the three packages: Compare the packages
Related guides
This is not legal advice. The guides are for general information; legislation and amounts change. Consult a lawyer or a tax specialist for your own situation.