Affordable housing

Cypriot Interior Minister Konstantinos Ioannou introduced the government's new housing policy on Tuesday.

In his opening statement, he outlined a comprehensive plan involving multiple levels of actions and measures, which allocates 77 million euros over a five-year period for the implementation of specific initiatives.

More and more foreign buyers are turning to the more affordable holiday properties they can find in Greece, compared to their countries of origin.

Rent or buy? Both options have become almost too expensive to contemplate, especially for aspiring homeowners in Greece who must also arrange for a bank loan.

Finding an affordable housing in Istanbul is becoming increasingly difficult for low- and medium-income groups with rent prices in the city rising fast.

A recent survey found that the average rent price of a 100 square meter house in Istanbul climbed to 16,000 Turkish Liras ($589).

This year, landlords and tenants have filed tens of thousands of legal cases to resolve the disagreements and conflicts among them, overwhelming the country's courts.

Some 90,000 rent dispute related legal cases have been opened at courts since the start of the year, Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said, noting that this marked a 100 percent increase from a year ago.

Police in Cyprus were dispatched on Monday night to quell a brewing riot at a residential complex in Chloraka, a village some 3 kilometers from Paphos, on the island's southwestern coast, that has reportedly been taken over by migrant squatters.

The rent crisis, which has been affecting millions of citizens for more than two years, has become one of the priorities of the public.

Last year, a 25 percent cap on rent increases was imposed by the government, and the deadline was extended this year.

The pace of growth in the annual increase in rental house prices has slowed from 117 percent to 101 percent across Türkiye, according to a study by Istanbul-based Bahçeşehir University's Economic and Social Research Center (BETAM).

The number of people looking for a rental house surpassed those who look for a house to buy, according to recently published data.

Figures provided by the real estate platform Emlakjet showed that in May 52 percent of those out in the real estate market are looking for a house to rent. In April, this was 50 percent.

A new public housing development in Ljubljana called Rakova Jelša II has been officially opened. The EUR 22.5 million project includes five apartment buildings with 156 non-profit rental flats and a stand-alone multi-purpose building with community facilities.