You bought the flat as an investment, let it, and from where you live now it is a line on a bank statement. You want the capital back, and you open with the same question every owner does: do I have to get the tenant out before I can sell?
No. A tenanted flat in Turkey can be sold, and the tenant's permission is not required. What you cannot do, and this surprises nearly every foreign owner, is sell the tenancy away. The lease does not end at the land registry counter; it crosses to the buyer intact, and your tenant stays put, on the same rent, for the same term. That one fact decides who buys the flat, what they pay, and how long they wait for keys.
The legal ground: the buyer inherits your tenant
Article 310 of the Turkish Code of Obligations (TBK) is the spine of this. When a let property changes hands, the new owner becomes a party to the lease (kira sözleşmesi) — automatically, by operation of law. No tenant consent, no fresh contract, no permission from anyone.
- A sale is not a ground for eviction (tahliye). "The flat has been sold, you have to leave" has no legal meaning in Turkey. The tenant continues on identical terms: rent, deposit, remaining term.
- The contract is whatever you wrote. Your buyer takes the lease exactly as it stands. A well-drafted lease is an asset at sale; a vague one is a discount.
If your plan was to serve notice, empty the flat and sell it vacant, stop there: nothing in Turkish law ends a tenancy because the owner would like to sell. Your routes to vacant possession are agreement with the tenant, or a valid vacate undertaking (tahliye taahhütnamesi) you already hold — the closed list is in evicting a tenant in Turkey.
Can the buyer get the tenant out?
If your buyer wants to live in the flat, TBK 351 gives them a route of their own: eviction for the new owner's need (ihtiyaç nedeniyle tahliye). The conditions and the calendar are fixed.
- The need must be a housing or business need for the new owner themselves, their spouse, their descendants, their ascendants, or people they are legally obliged to support.
- First route: notify the tenant in writing within one month of the acquisition date on the tapu (title deed), then end the lease through an action brought six months later.
- Second route: bring the action within one month of the end of the current lease term.
- The need must be genuine, sincere and compelling, and the court tests it. Claiming to move in and then re-letting the flat to someone else carries its own sanctions.
You need that calendar because you will have to say it out loud. Told at the start, a buyer negotiates; told late, a buyer withdraws.
One document changes the picture. A vacate undertaking (the tenant's validly obtained written promise to leave on a stated date) passes with the lease to the new owner, which makes it the most valuable paper in the file. Check yours is still alive: a 2026 Supreme Court ruling holds that signing a new lease with the same tenant voids the earlier undertaking, one of several traps in the 2026 rulings every landlord should know.
What the deposit does, and why it can follow you home
The deposit is the loose end that finds sellers abroad long after they thought they had finished. The 2026 ruling on it is blunt: the former owner who took the deposit stays liable to the tenant unless he can prove he handed it to the buyer. The deed changing hands does not move the money.
So put it in writing: record the handover in the sale documents and tell the tenant. Settle two more lines the same day — who the rent is now paid to and into which account, and the aidat (the building's monthly service charge) and utility subscriptions, notified to the building management. That removes the arguments that otherwise surface months later, when you are in another country and the file is somebody else's memory.
Who buys a tenanted flat
List one and the buyer pool splits in two.
The owner-occupier treats the tenant as an obstacle, and is not wrong to. The move-in date depends on a notice period and a court calendar, a mortgage lender's valuer needs to get inside, and viewings run by appointment. This buyer either walks away or prices the uncertainty.
The investor sees it inverted. A tenant already in place, with an evidenced payment history, is income from day one: no void, no cost of finding a tenant, rent running from the day the deed transfers. A reliable tenant is not a fault in the flat; it is part of the fittings.
Which of the two turns up depends largely on where your rent sits against the market. At market level the file is strong for investors and the listing should lead on yield. Well below market (the usual position for a flat let years ago and carried forward on capped increases), the investor prices on today's rent and cuts the offer to match. The negotiation then turns on when the rent can be reset. The five-year threshold and the court's role in it are in the rent determination lawsuit.
The price: is there a discount, and how big?
A tenanted flat usually sells with a negotiating margin against its vacant equivalent, because part of the buyer pool was eliminated at the door and the rest is pricing uncertainty. There is no fixed percentage for it: it moves with the rent level, the remaining term, the district's investor appetite, and the flat itself. Three things narrow it:
- Document the file. Lease, payment history as bank receipts, aidat position, vacate undertaking if there is one. Investors discount uncertainty; paper removes uncertainty.
- Price the vacant-possession option separately. If a written exit date can be agreed with the tenant, put two numbers on the table and negotiate across both.
- Declare the real price at the tapu. Understating it is not only a penalty risk: it complicates the buyer's mortgage and valuation, and hands them a lower cost base to be taxed on later.
Viewings: the question that actually decides the sale
Day to day, the friction in a tenanted sale is not eviction. It is access. Under TBK 319 the tenant must allow the property to be viewed to the extent necessary for the sale, at a time suitable for the tenant and with advance notice. The tenant cannot keep the door shut indefinitely; you cannot turn a key unannounced.
What works is a fixed window: one or two agreed slots a week, with candidates grouped into them, so the tenant's week stays whole and your process keeps moving. Give notice before a photo shoot, and frame the pictures to respect a home someone is living in. Do not conceal the sale either: the tenant will see the listing. Turkish law gives a residential tenant no right of pre-emption, but nothing stops you offering first — a tenant who would rather not pay to move is sometimes the least troublesome buyer available.
From another country all of this is somebody's job; the rest of the remote sequence is in selling your Istanbul property from abroad.
Three strategies: which one fits your file?
| Strategy | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Sell it tenanted | Rent at market, documented file | Advertise it as a yield |
| Agree an exit, sell vacant | Flats an owner-occupier would want | The exit date must be in writing |
| Correct the rent, then sell | Rent far below market | Five-year threshold, notice timing |
The third row rarely occurs to owners and is sometimes the most profitable: a corrected rent sells to an investor on an entirely different multiple.
Settle one number before you decide anything
The right price for a tenanted flat is two numbers: what it is worth to an investor exactly as it stands, and what it would fetch with vacant possession. Without both you cannot set an asking price, negotiate an exit with your tenant, or answer the question behind all of it — whether to sell at all.
We will work both out on comparables, and if you have decided, the sale itself can be run from here while you stay where you are. There is nothing to pay up front. On a sale, our fee from the seller is the seller's half of the statutory ceiling; depending on the deal, the buyer may pay the other half.