Turkey Is World’s Most Unaffordable Housing Markets
As per MoneyTransfers.com Turkey was revealed to be the most unaffordable housing market in the world, with a house price to income ratio of 197%. On the other end of the spectrum, Brazil was found to be the most affordable, with a house price to income ratio of 66%.
The house-price-to-income-ratio: The ratio measures the development of housing affordability and is calculated by dividing nominal house price by nominal disposable income per head, with 2015 set as a base year when the index amounted to 100. A ratio of 120, would mean that house prices have outpaced income by 20% since 2015.
Jonathan Merry, remittance expert at MoneyTransers.com commented, “There are in fact 27 countries where the house-price-to-income ratio is even more severe than it is here, where our ratio of 115.0% puts us in 28th place, sandwiched between the Euro area (i.e. countries that joined the Euro Zone prior to 2009) and France. On the whole, our experience is very similar to that of our near neighbours on the continent, and things could be an awful lot worse.”
Rent hikes in Turkey have become so steep in the past year that they have led to violence between landlords and tenants, with the media reporting 11 deaths and 46 injuries.
Rents have soared by an average of 121% over the past year, and in big cities such as Ankara and Istanbul, they have surged by as much as 188 %.
This is due to many factors, including a cost-of-living crisis, high inflation, and an influx of displaced people from the devastating earthquake that struck the country in February.
The government has capped property rent increases at 25% for households, and aligned them with the official inflation rate for businesses.
However, experts say the measures have only heightened tensions, prompting many landlords to use any means – including illegal ones – to evict tenants and find new ones ready to pay higher prices.
Around 47,000 eviction trials and 100,000 others concerning illegal rent increases opened in the first six months of this year, more than double in the same period of 2022, according to Turkish media.
