Turkey Property Market: Prices, Yields and the Lira Gap in 2026
Turkish homes gained 24.5% in lira last year but only 6.6% in dollars. Glopra data on prices, yields, tax and buying costs explains why that gap matters.
Turkey is the most affordable of the fifteen markets Glopra tracks when price is set against local incomes, and one of the hardest to read when you look at returns. Both things trace back to the same cause: the lira. Before any Turkish listing makes sense, you have to know which currency the number is speaking in.
Why did prices rise 24.5% in lira but only 6.6% in dollars?
Over the last twelve months the national average gained 24.5% in local currency and 6.6% in USD, according to the Glopra snapshot 2026-07-23, methodology v3. The roughly eighteen-point gap is not a measurement error. It is inflation, and it runs through everything a foreign buyer sees. Turkish sellers reprice in lira simply to hold their ground; a buyer who converts euros or dollars in at purchase and out at sale keeps only what survives the exchange rate in between. The Turkish central bank, TCMB, publishes its residential property price index in nominal lira, which is why figures quoted from Turkish sources look dramatic next to Glopra's dollar series. The long run makes the point plainer: +114.6% over five years in USD against +56.1% over ten. The first half of that decade destroyed dollar value; the second half has been earning it back.
What does a square metre cost in İstanbul and Antalya?
The country figure is 1,755 USD/m² on a city-average basis, while İstanbul sits below it at 1,340 USD/m² and Antalya at 1,170 USD/m² (Glopra snapshot 2026-07-23, methodology v3). Buyers who expect the biggest city to be the priciest often misread this. City averages blend whole metropolitan areas, so İstanbul's vast stock of ordinary suburban apartments pulls its average well under the premium coastal and Bosphorus product that shapes the national number. Endeksa and Numbeo show the same ordering in their own series.
Is Turkish housing still within reach of Turkish buyers?
Price-to-income stands at 6.58, the lowest reading of the fifteen markets in the Glopra set (snapshot 2026-07-23, methodology v3). At the other extreme, Indonesia records 25.5 — a household there needs nearly four times as many years of income to buy the same floor area. For a foreign investor this is not an abstraction. Domestic buyers are the floor under Turkish demand, and a market where locals can still transact does not depend on foreign money to clear.
What does a Turkish rental actually earn?
Gross rental yield is 7.32% nationally, 8.17% in İstanbul and 6.14% in Antalya (Glopra snapshot 2026-07-23, methodology v3), a spread that Global Property Guide's yield tables broadly echo. İstanbul short-let owners should read the occupancy line before the headline rate: 59% occupancy at an average daily rate of 68 USD is a working business, not a windfall, and the empty nights are where amateur projections usually fail. Rental income is taxed on a progressive scale with an effective burden near 18.39%, ranging from 13.96% to 22.82% depending on the band. That is unremarkable by European standards, but it is a long way from the 0% a landlord pays in the UAE.
How hot is the market, and what does buying cost?
Glopra's bubble score puts Turkey at 60, which the model calls elevated. Antalya reads warmer at 67 and İstanbul cooler at 57, in moderate territory. Portugal scores 84 in the same snapshot and Morocco 16, so Turkey sits nearer the middle than the headlines suggest. Total transaction costs of 8.7% are the market's quieter advantage — Spain charges 15.3% for the same round trip, which is close to two years of Turkish gross rent handed over at the notary. Glopra rates data confidence for Turkey as High, so these figures carry more weight than the thin-data markets elsewhere in the set.
Sources
TCMB Residential Property Price Index — https://www.tcmb.gov.tr/wps/wcm/connect/21c8c007-4006-45ee-bbc2-852f396a23f0/RPPI.pdf
Global Property Guide — https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/asia/turkey/rental-yields
Numbeo — https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/country_result.jsp?country=Turkey
Endeksa — https://www.endeksa.com/en/analiz/turkiye/endeks
Glopra Market Data v3 — https://glopra.com