Rents in Istanbul leap 98 percent

Home rents in Istanbul increased by 97.7 percent in January from the same month of last year, a study has shown.

The price of rental houses was 44 Turkish Liras per square meter in the city, which is home to nearly 16 million people, according to the Center for Economic and Social Research (BETAM) at Bahçeşehir University, which collected data from the online classified advertisements platform sahibinden.com.

The annual increase in rents in the city was 13.1 points higher than it was in December 2021.

The spike in rents was one of the most talked about issues last year, particularly in Istanbul, where tens of thousands of students live. Local media ran stories on landlords asking astronomical prices for tiny studios in fairly bad conditions in all quarters of the city.

Experts and real estate agents linked the sharp increase in rents to problems with the supply of houses.

The prices of houses on sale in Istanbul are also on the rise. Home prices in the megacity rose by 63 percent in December 2021. Despite the increase in prices, more than 39,000 homes were sold in Istanbul, up from the previous month's 32,000. In the whole of 2021, a total of 276,000 houses were purchased in the city compared with 265,000 in the previous year.

The BETAM study also showed that rents across the country increased by 77.8 percent on an annual basis.

The rise in Ankara was 82 percent, while it was 62 percent in İzmir, Turkey's third largest city on the Aegean coast.

The highest annual increase in rents was recorded in the southwestern province of Muğla at 108 percent, followed by Istanbul and the popular holiday destination Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast, at 92 percent.