Buying Land - A Cautionary Tale

Farm Lands - A warning to others

We bought a piece of land (tarla) in Karaculha last July.  It has was a very messy  purchase even from the beginning as the land was split between a family.  To allow us to buy the land, the rest of the family had to sign an agreement to say that we could go ahead with the purchase.  This caused great concern in itself as we received 7 signatures and a thumb print!  We were assured by the estate agent and her English partner that this was all perfectly normal for Turkey and there wouldn’t be any problems.  We went ahead with the purchase on the understanding that we had a 5% building permission.  This was going to be our dream home. It was perfect.  It has the most amazing views all over Fethiye with the backdrop of the mountains behind us, which would also mean that very little building activity could go on to spoil our piece of paradise.  Even when parcelisation finally comes to this area, due to our elevated position and size of the plot, we should in theory have still maintained our privacy.

We paid an architect to start working on our plans and also paid a deposit last year for building materials to try and keep the cost down.  The plans were finally agreed 3 weeks ago (March 2005) and we applied for building permission.  We couldn’t believe it when it was refused on the basis that the road is shown at Fethiye Council as a stream.  You cannot build unless you have road access.  We are devastated.  There is one house behind our plot which uses the same road, but this has obviously been built without planning permission.  We have since found out that most of the Turkish houses in this region have been built illegally. 

There is nothing we can do about it and have now been left with a seemingly worthless piece of land.  The estate agent is trying to re sell it for us, but based on the knowledge now that you cannot build, I see no reason why anyone else would want to purchase it and certainly not for the money we paid. She also claims to have been let down by her map people as they should have checked all of this information out at the time.

We are gutted and at a loss as to what to do next.  Our one saving grace out of all of this is that our builder was honest and told us that building permission had been refused.

Contributor - S L April 2005