The problem of access to housing does not only affect Turkey but the world.

The first speaker of the session , Mr. Neşecan Çekici , Chairman of the Board of Directors of GYODER , evaluated the problem of access to housing on a global scale and presented GYODER ‘s solution proposals :

“As a sector, we need to evaluate what we are doing wrong today by putting our experiences on top of it in order to plan for tomorrow. The problem involves not only Turkey but the world. The world is more complex than when we first started in the sector. The impact of globalization is pulling us all in. Our real estate markets are under stress. The world literature refers to this as “markets under stress”. Early intervention, sustainable measures and preventing potential current account deficits are crucial in this big picture.

As an association , we are trying to broaden our perspective. When we look at the global data on housing and real estate , we see 5 global factors. Climate change ranks first. Change in human capital is an important factor. In addition to this, the housing crisis, geopolitical changes and the capital markets are considered as five factors to get out of this circle.

What is happeningin the world? Why is there a housing crisis or deficit? Every week, 1.5 million people join urban life around the world. 85 percent of the global gross domestic product, or 90 percent according to some reports, is generated in cities. There are 10 megacities with populations over 20 million. 22 of the 37 cities with 10 million inhabitantsare in Asia. So where are we in this game?

According to the data, we are not the only ones facing difficulties in accessing housing. It affects 6 billion people. By 2030 , 3 billion people will suffer. In addition , 100 million people are currently experiencing homelessness. With all this , we are heading towards a housing crisis. Theworld literature says, ‘ if we want to facilitate housing affordability , we need to give up day-to-day solutions. Of course, in the short-term , dressings are necessary , but these are micro-solutions. For societies where access to housing is difficult, long-term economic stability is absolutely necessary.”

Emphasizing that the stakeholders of the sector should be mobilized in the problem of access to housing, Neşecan Çekici listed the solutions they created specifically for GYODER as follows:

“This is not a job to be done alone. Everyone should take a hand in the solution. Whenever the supply-demand balance is disturbed , it takes years to bring it back into balance. The deteriorating process costs us all. We need to pay attention to this. We have to take into accountdemographic changes. Solo lives are increasing significantly. There is a decrease in living with family members. We need to put this data into our development plans within our sectoral problems. Individual solutions and inert answers are not permanent solutions. Economic development is needed. The real estate sector is the heart of the Turkish economy. By approaching it in this way , we will find the truth. As GYODER , we have already stated our solution proposals for the housing crisis. We propose a strategic plan for the long term. For this , we propose a housing and real estate policy. This includes borrowing treasury land, leasing land ownership, and supporting savings funds. In terms of financial solutions , we have a proposal for a Housing and Mortgage Bank of Turkey. In order to integrate housing credit and monetary policy into the country’s economic policy in the long term, we need a system that facilitates the acquisition of housing. Many instruments such as real estate certificates, real estate investment funds and real estate based bonds need to be implemented. We are preparing the infrastructure for these. We think thatidle houses should be taxed. There should be a tax reduction for tenants. Legal processes should be accelerated. We have an approach called urban transformation and earthquake preparedness fund. This fund accelerates the transformation process. Construction companies need to be institutionalized. The resilience of the financial structure here needs to be increased. The financial strength performance of companies must increase. In addition to participatory approaches , as all sector actors , our business models must change.”

Producing housing by rote will not solve this problem… Next year’s slogan will be “consumer-oriented housing production”.

Producing housing by rote will not solve this problem… The slogan of the coming year will be “consumer-oriented housing production.” As the second speaker of the session, Engin Keçeli, President of the Istanbul Builders Association (İNDER), evaluated the last point reached in housing sales marketing as follows:

“At İNDER, we have been preparing year mottoes under different headings for 3 years. Our motto and slogan this year is consumer-oriented housing production. It is not possible to solve this issue by producing housing by rote. This requires feasibility and data analysis, and when we look at it as an association, we see that we have lost touch with this. We need to get rid of this rote memorization and we need data analysis and feasibility.

Housing prices have been decreasing in real terms for the last 2-3 years, but the main problem is the decrease in incomes. We used to look at everyone as a customer. Until 2-3 years ago, we were also marketing for Generation Z, but we stopped because Generation Z is not very keen on buying a house. They put forward two reasons: firstly, they think ‘why should I bother myself in this empty world’. Secondly, they say ‘why should I own a house? I will move every 6 months or a year’. We were different because we were the obedient generation. The expectations of the current generation are different. That’s why, when we are looking for customers, we now turn to their parents rather than young people. We try to convince them to force their children to buy a house.

In our analysis as İNDER, we have seen that only 85 thousand out of 85 million are home buyers. The reason for this is the lack of financial instruments in accessibility to housing and high interest rates. There is a real estate and housing crisis in the world. The main reason for this is that we do not produce consumer-oriented housing. There is definitely a need for feasibility instead of the rote memorization of the past. Then we can deal with financing problems.”

The state does not have to give us housing. It doesn’t have to give us shelter.

President of the Real Estate Law Institute (GHE) Dr. Av. Ali Yüksel evaluated the processes of home ownership from the past to the present with the following words:

“There is a concept called the right of access to housing in the world. Some of our participants said; ‘Some countries have to provide their citizens with the right to housing or shelter.’ But is Turkey like this? The right to housing is expressed as the right to have a dwelling. The right to housing is the right to live somewhere. The two are related but different situations. This is a situation that is also mentioned in international conventions.

It is said that people’s access to housing is a right. In our country, the problem starts with the 82nd Constitution. So the state does not have to give us housing. It doesn’t have to give us shelter either. According to the 60s, it did. What has happened now? The contractor naturally aims to make profit due to the free market and acts accordingly. Today we have TOKİ. Yes, TOKİ also works hard, but TOKİ alone is not enough. In urban transformation, they always go to areas with valuable land. In the free market, no one goes to areas where they will not make a profit.

In the 1950s and 60s, the urbanization rate in Turkey was 17 percent. Today this rate has returned to life in villages. There is no tenancy problem in villages, but there is in cities. The problem of access to housing is extremely high in cities. While our tenancy rate was 21 percent in 2012, it has increased to 28 percent. This reveals the source of conflicts between tenants and owners.”

It is unlikely that people will be able to pay their rent and survive, and if they can, invest in housing.

İsmail Özcan, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Real Estate Marketing and Sales Professionals Association (GAPAS), explained in detail the reasons behind the housing problem in Turkey:

“As of December 2023, about 70 percent of the fixed wage earners in Turkey earn 1 or 1.5 minimum wages. It is very unlikely that these people will be able to pay their rent and maintain their lives, and if they can increase their income, they will be able to invest in housing.

We think that we have lost our white-collar working customers, especially due to the economic situation in the last few years. Why? Shrinking credit opportunities, rising interest rates, unpredictability in business continuity… This situation is also reflected in the figures. Mortgaged sales have declined to almost 10 percent in official statistics.

We are now starting to share every aspect of life. Shared house, shared office, shared car… The new generation’s understanding of ownership or ownership is changing. Investment, in particular, seems to be non-existent at the moment. Everyone is thinking of spending a little more time. This situation is not likely to change much in the next 3 – 5 years. It would be useful for us to make some inquiries about the concept of ownership.

There are valuable opinions and suggestions for solving the problems in the sector, but the public authority is the place where these will be melted in a pot. Perhaps we need to put our weight there all together. It is necessary to see that the real estate sector is moving towards the rental market. That is why we developed the ‘Rent Guarantee System’.

TOKİ and Emlak Konut should take the lead in this regard. We need to stop selling public lands and plots. These are rights that we should leave to our grandchildren. At this point, we need to develop new models.”

Hakan Akdoğan, Chairman of the Real Estate Services Committee of the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (ITO), who conveyed the problems coming from the field regarding accessibility to housing, said the following:

“We are experiencing a very serious problem especially on the advertisement portals. The placement of fake, misleading and deceptive advertisements is a very common problem in such periods. One of the issues we receive the most complaints about is the difficulties in accessing loans. There is a serious limitation on loans for second home buyers. We also find it difficult to understand this. We are talking about urban transformation; a citizen who wants to put his house into urban transformation needs a second house, but you do not give him credit financing support because it is a second house.

When we alienate investors or start debates about whether housing should be an investment today, then we cannot increase the supply of rental housing. So where does this money go when we cannot increase it? For the first time, we had a current account deficit on the real estate side… Unfortunately, we sent our investors, our citizens with savings and money to other countries with our own hands. Due to the shortage of supply, our citizens had to struggle with continuous price increases.

One of the most common problems is the debate on the fair value and real value. This is also a huge handicap for citizens. We talk about housing becoming unaffordable, but we cannot get anywhere just by complaining. We need to develop solutions suitable for today’s conditions. We think that qualified labor force should enter this sector. It does not seem possible for us to sustain these works with day-to-day solutions.

Now the stakeholders of the real estate sector need to come together on a legal basis. This may be called a sector council… It seems that we can only solve such big problems by coming together.”

6.7 Million Houses Need Urgent Conversion..

Quik Sigorta Genel Müdür Yardımcısı Soner Tekbaş, Türkiye’deki kentsel dönüşüm ve bina tamamlama sigortası hakkında bilgiler paylaştığı konuşmasında şu ifadelere yer verdi:

“There is an earthquake reality in our country and it never lets us forget it. Earthquakes remind us how important urban transformation, building construction and soils are. In our country, there are 6.7 million houses that urgently need to be transformed. We have another reality; the annual production of housing stock in our country is around 100 thousand. In other words, for the transformation of 6.7 million houses, if we leave it to its normal course, we need 67 years. However, the earthquake does not work with time. We cannot overcome this by producing 100 thousand houses per year.

We have a great chance, and that is the number of contractors in the country. According to the latest statistics, we have 423 thousand contractors. This number is 30 thousand in the European Union countries. In Germany, it is only 3 thousand… We have the necessary contractor infrastructure for the transformation of 6.7 million houses.

On June 23, 2024, the Building Completion Insurance model was created, covering urban transformation. One of the biggest obstacles in urban transformation is the problem of trust. People who want to transform their houses do not trust the contractor. Even the contractor does not trust himself because there is an economic system where he cannot predict what might happen in the near future. The municipality does not trust the contractor either. So there is an environment of distrust. In this sense, the element that fully ensures trust is Building Completion Insurance.

What does Building Completion Insurance do? As the name suggests, it ensures that the building is completed in the required time. In this way, the contractor, the landowner and the relevant municipality can rest easy. So what should we do? We should encourage Building Completion Insurance.”

Innovative solutions for access to housing increase demand.

Fisun Kapki, General Coordinator of Siltaş Yapı, one of the main sponsors of the 12th Leaders in Real Estate Summit, drew attention to the importance of flexible plans.

Fisun Kapki expressed her views at the ‘Alternative Solutions and Approaches Produced in Access to Real Estate’ session held within the scope of the summit, emphasizing that high sales rates can be achieved with the right location, architectural designs and flexible payment plans. At this point, Kapki said that they offer more flexible options to their customers with the ‘change-as-you-pay-develop’ model and emphasized that they make living spaces more accessible with their projects built with innovative solutions developed in the light of technology.

Emphasizing that as Siltaş Yapı, they continue to build living spaces that transform the city and are compatible with the city in the light of their understanding of ‘buildings that add value to the city’, Fisun Kapki said:

“While producing each project, our source of motivation is always our next project. We gain new customers with our loyal customer portfolio and the references we receive from them. Our customer loyalty is based on our mutual trust relationship. With our ‘change-as-you-pay-develop-as-you-pay’ model that we have developed for our customers, the investment of our customer who buys an apartment from one of our projects also starts. Within the scope of our model, a person who buys an apartment from Siltaş Yapı’s project has the opportunity to improve his investment in terms of both housing type and price by changing his apartment in our other projects if he wishes. The reason why we can easily offer this model is that we are constantly developing many projects.

There is no such thing as expensive real estate. There are unsuitable locations, plans, square meters and payment terms. However, when these elements come together in the right way, sales become inevitable. As Siltaş Yapı; we achieve great success in sales rates by combining the right location, the right architectural designs and the right square meters with personalized payment plans in our projects. While we continue to produce projects that attract attention even in years of economic contraction, we care about innovative ideas in order to reach our customers more effectively and expand our work in this direction. In this context, we continue to utilize sustainable energy, improve our technological infrastructure, integrate artificial intelligence into our projects and increase access to our projects by improving user experiences. In the coming period, we will continue to transform the city and produce buildings that add value to the city with increasing momentum.”