Client story
Client's Story
Where they started
The client intended to obtain a Turkey residence permit through real estate and had already selected a specific apartment in a popular Istanbul district. Everything appeared to be working out: the budget was suitable, the property was appealing, and the seller was ready to proceed with the transaction.
Why the standard route did not work
However, there was a hidden trap that buyers often do not know about. In Turkey, a number of districts are closed for foreign national registration: when the share of foreigners in a district exceeds the established threshold (approximately 25%), the Migration Authority (Göç İdaresi) stops registering new residence permits there. The subtlety is that you can still purchase real estate in such a district—the ban applies specifically to residence permit registration, not to purchase. That is, a person can purchase an apartment without issue, and then discover that a residence permit cannot be issued for it: the district is closed.
What BRIDGES had to solve
The district selected by the client turned out to be among the closed ones. If the transaction had proceeded, he would have received the real estate but not the residence permit—meaning he would not have achieved his main objective and would have frozen money in an asset that did not provide the required status. The solution was to catch this before the transaction: we verified the current district status with the Migration Authority (as statuses change—some districts are periodically closed and reopened) and, seeing that it was closed, proposed an alternative—to find an equivalent property in a district open for residence permit registration, where the İkamet can be issued without problems.
Why a standard answer would not do
At BRIDGES, the client came at the right time—before the transaction: to verify the district for residence permit registration possibility and, since the selected one was closed, to change it to an open one, preserving both the investment and the objective of obtaining İkamet.
I was about to purchase an apartment in a popular Istanbul district for a residence permit—and was confident that if the purchase was permitted, the residence permit would be registered. Igor stopped me before the transaction: he verified the district with the Migration Authority, and it turned out to be closed for foreign national registration. You can buy there, but you cannot issue a residence permit, and I would have frozen my money without status. They found an equivalent property in an open district, and I obtained the residence permit without issue. If it were not for this pre-transaction verification, I would have remained with an apartment but without a residence permit.
