Buying a resale property in Turkey from a foreign owner is an ordinary purchase that runs on the same rules as any other, and the one thing it cannot do is deliver Turkish citizenship. Turkish citizenship by investment requires that the property is not registered in the name of any foreign natural person, which disqualifies every flat currently held by a foreigner whatever its price or condition. That condition cannot be worked around by routing the sale through a Turkish citizen first, because the same guidance also excludes any property transferred by a foreign national after 12 January 2017, and a flat that has already carried one citizenship application cannot carry a second. Blue card holders, citizens of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and dual national Turkish citizens are not treated as foreign, so buying from them leaves the route open, with the single exception of a seller who obtained Turkish citizenship through the investment programme and therefore stays inside the excluded category despite holding a Turkish identity card. For a buyer with no interest in a passport none of this applies, and the seller's nationality instead changes the profile of six checks, namely the three year restriction annotation on the deed, the seller's five year capital gains window, a power of attorney signed abroad, unpaid property tax and service charges, dormant utility subscriptions, and the VAT (value added tax) history of a flat bought new under the foreign buyer exemption. Unpaid property tax and unpaid inheritance tax do not become the buyer's debt under current law, and either one stops the transfer from completing until it is cleared. At Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye buying rates of 25 August 2026, USD 400,000 converts to approximately EUR 343,000, which is the band in Alanya where foreign ownership is densest and where the seller's passport decides the most money.
What changes when the seller is a foreign national, and what stays the same
Almost every mechanical step of a Turkish property purchase runs identically whether the seller holds a Turkish passport or a foreign one, and the single thing that changes completely is whether the flat can ever be used for Turkish citizenship by investment. The purchase itself is legal, ordinary and common. Alanya, a district of Antalya province on Turkey's southern coast, has been selling apartments to foreign buyers since the early 2000s, and a large share of the resale stock on the market today sits in foreign names. Buying from those owners is routine.
The confusion comes from mixing two separate questions. One question asks whether a foreigner may buy from another foreigner, and the answer is yes, on the same terms as any other purchase. The other question asks whether that particular flat qualifies for the citizenship by investment programme, and there the seller's nationality is decisive.
Six further items do not change legally but change in profile, because the person on the other side of the table lives somewhere else and bought under a different set of incentives.
| Item | Does the seller's nationality change it? | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Your own eligibility to buy under article 35 of the Tapu Kanunu | No | The 30 hectare national cap and the 10% district cap apply to you as a person, not to who sold to you |
| Tapu harcı (title deed transfer tax) at 4% of the declared value | No | Split 2% buyer and 2% seller by statute, negotiable in practice |
| The döviz alım belgesi (currency purchase document) requirement | No | It attaches to your incoming foreign currency, not to the seller |
| Sworn translator at the counter | No | Required where a party does not speak Turkish |
| Military and security zone clearance | No | The check runs on the parcel, not on the parties |
| Iskan (habitation certificate) and title status checks | No | Same checks, same documents |
| Citizenship by investment eligibility | Yes, completely | A flat registered to a foreign national cannot be used for the application |
| The three year restriction annotation | Yes, in likelihood | A foreign owner is far more likely to carry one than a Turkish owner |
| The seller's capital gains position | Yes, in profile | A recent foreign buyer is usually inside the five year window |
| Physical presence at the transfer | Yes, in practice | Expect a power of attorney rather than the seller in the room |
| Arrears and dormant subscriptions | Yes, in profile | Absentee ownership produces a different debt pattern |
| VAT history of the flat | Yes, in profile | The seller may have bought under the foreign buyer exemption |
Read the table by asking which of the two buyers you are. A buyer with no interest in a Turkish passport faces a normal purchase with a modified checklist. A buyer whose entire reason for spending the USD 400,000 threshold amount, unchanged since June 2022, is the passport faces a flat that cannot deliver it.
Why a foreign-owned flat cannot be used for Turkish citizenship
The guidance the Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü issues on the Turkish Citizenship Law implementing regulation requires that the property must not be registered in the name of any foreign natural person, which disqualifies every flat currently owned by a foreigner. The wording covers the applicant's own spouse and children as well as unrelated foreign owners. It is a condition about the state of the land register on the day you buy, not about your own qualities as a buyer.
The threshold sits at USD 400,000, applied per applicant rather than per property or per family. No limit applies to the number of properties used to reach the figure, so an applicant may combine two or ten, and the main applicant's spouse and children under 18 are included as dependants without further investment. The property is then held under a restriction preventing sale for three years, recorded on the deed itself.
Against that framework, the seller condition works as a filter applied before any of the arithmetic matters. A flat priced at USD 450,000 as of August 2026, with a clean title, a valid iskan and an enthusiastic foreign owner, fails the programme on a single line of the register, and no valuation report, payment structure or legal argument moves it.
Three consequences follow for anyone shopping with a passport in mind.
- Filter by the seller's nationality before you filter by price. Asking who currently owns the flat costs nothing and eliminates the largest category of wasted viewings in Alanya's upper price band.
- Treat agency assurances as a starting point rather than an answer. The register is the authority, and a current tapu kayıt örneği (title register extract) settles the question in one document.
- Separate the two purchases in your own mind. Buying a foreign-owned flat as a home or a rental asset is unaffected. Buying one as a route to a passport does not work.
An Alanya agent showing a foreign buyer a foreign-owned flat is not necessarily misleading anyone, because the great majority of resale purchases have nothing to do with citizenship. The mismatch appears only when the buyer's purpose is never stated out loud.
Can a Turkish citizen in the middle repair the citizenship problem?
No, and the reason is a rule written specifically to close that route: the property must also not be one transferred by any foreign natural person after 12 January 2017. Passing the flat through a Turkish citizen first does not clean it. The register keeps the history, and the guidance reaches back through it.
The rule is often described in the market as a cooling period of two or three years. That description understates it. The condition as written fixes a calendar date rather than a rolling window, which means a transfer made in 2018 still disqualifies the property in 2026 and will continue to do so.
A second limb of the same condition catches family arrangements. A second-hand property must not be one that the applicant, or the applicant's first-degree relatives whether Turkish citizens or not, previously transferred to a Turkish citizen or a Turkish company. A third limb catches corporate ownership, covering companies in which the foreign buyer or their first-degree relatives are partners or managers, and companies with foreign shareholders of the same nationality that fall under article 36 of the Tapu Kanunu.
The practical instruction that follows is short. Ask for the acquisition history of the parcel, not merely the current owner. A flat that a Turkish citizen bought from a Norwegian owner in 2021 and now offers for sale looks, in every document an agent normally shows, exactly like a flat that has been in Turkish hands since it was built.
| What you see | What you need to know | Where the answer lives |
|---|---|---|
| Current owner is a Turkish citizen | Whether a foreign national transferred it after 12 January 2017 | Acquisition history on the register |
| Current owner is a Turkish company | Whether the shareholders bring it under article 36 | Trade registry plus the register |
| Current owner is a foreign national | The flat is already outside the programme | The register alone |
| Seller is your own relative | Whether the flat previously passed from your family to a Turkish holder | Your own records plus the register |
Because these facts sit in the deed history rather than on the current page of the register, they are a question for a lawyer reviewing the parcel rather than for the person selling it.
Has this flat already been used for someone else's citizenship?
A property can support a citizenship application once, and once it has done so, no other foreign national can use the same property or the same share for a further application. The flat is spent for that purpose permanently.
This matters most precisely where a buyer is most likely to be looking. Properties priced around USD 400,000 in Alanya's coastal neighbourhoods are the natural inventory of the citizenship programme, which means an unusually high proportion of them have already carried one application. A foreign owner selling at that price point in 2026, three or more years after the 2021 and 2022 wave of applications, is a familiar profile: someone whose restriction period has run and who is now free to sell.
For that seller the sale is a straightforward exit. For a buyer with the same plan, the flat delivers the property and not the passport.
The diagnostic is the deed history again rather than the seller's account of it. A previous citizenship acquisition leaves traces in the register, including the restriction annotation that was placed when the earlier application was made. A buyer who asks only whether the flat is currently free of restrictions learns nothing about whether it was restricted before.
Consider a concrete pairing. Two neighbouring flats in Mahmutlar, a coastal neighbourhood in the Alanya district of Antalya province, are both offered at USD 420,000 in August 2026. One belongs to a Turkish family that has owned it since 2015. The other belongs to a foreign national who acquired citizenship through it in 2022 and whose restriction expired in 2025. For a buyer who wants a holiday flat the two are interchangeable and the second may well be cheaper. For a buyer who wants a Turkish passport the first is the only one that exists.
The seller who holds a Turkish identity card and still counts as foreign
Blue card holders, citizens of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Turkish citizens who also hold another nationality are not treated as foreigners under the guidance, so buying from them leaves the citizenship route open, with one exception that reverses the result. The exception covers sellers who obtained Turkish citizenship under article 12(1)(b) of the Turkish Citizenship Law, which is the investment route itself.
The wording is explicit about the general position. Persons who left Turkish citizenship with permission and hold a mavi kart (blue card), citizens of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and Turkish citizens with multiple nationalities are not evaluated as foreign within the scope of the guidance. Where a Turkish citizen also holds another country's citizenship, the Turkish citizenship governs the transaction.
The exception is where the difficulty lives. A seller who bought Turkish property under the investment programme, obtained citizenship through it, and now holds a Turkish identity card is a Turkish citizen for most purposes and still sits inside the excluded category for this one. Nothing on the identity card, and nothing on the current page of the register, announces which category the seller belongs to.
That produces an asymmetry worth stating plainly. The seller category that most obviously looks foreign, a Norwegian or Russian name on the deed, is easy to spot and disqualifies the flat. The seller category that looks most Turkish, a Turkish identity card issued a few years ago, can disqualify it just as completely and is invisible to an ordinary document check.
A buyer pursuing citizenship therefore asks a question that feels intrusive and is not. Ask when and how the seller acquired Turkish citizenship. A seller by birth answers instantly. A seller by investment answers differently, and that answer decides whether the purchase can serve your purpose.
Widely circulated advice tells foreign buyers to look for a Turkish seller and stop there. That advice is incomplete in both directions. It wrongly excludes blue card and Northern Cypriot sellers who are perfectly usable, and it wrongly includes investment-route citizens who are not.
What the annotations column on the title deed tells you about a foreign owner
The three year restriction placed on a property used for citizenship by investment sits on the deed itself, and while it is live the owner cannot sell to you at all. Reading the beyanlar (declarations) column of a current register extract is the fastest way to learn whether the flat in front of you is legally available.
Turkish land registry practice distinguishes between annotations that prohibit disposal and entries that merely restrict or record a personal right. The Tapu Sicili Tüzüğü lists the prohibitive category, which includes interim injunctions, public seizures, bankruptcy and composition entries, family home annotations and the removal of a spouse's power of disposal. A mortgage, by contrast, is a limited real right rather than an annotation and does not by itself prevent a sale.
For a foreign-owned flat the two entries worth checking first are the citizenship restriction and the aile konutu şerhi (family home annotation). The first is common in the price band the citizenship programme created. The second matters because Turkish law requires the express consent of the non-owning spouse before a family home is transferred, and a foreign owner's marital circumstances are harder to verify from abroad.
Two instructions follow, and they differ.
- Obtain a current register extract dated within days of your offer rather than relying on a photograph of the owner's deed, because annotations are added and removed over time and an old document proves nothing about today.
- Ask the seller's marital status and where the family lives rather than assuming the absence of an annotation settles the question, since the consent requirement exists in law whether or not anybody has recorded it on the register.
A live restriction is a timing problem rather than a defect. If the annotation has months left to run, the flat is not for sale yet, and any deposit paid against a promise to sell later carries the risk that the seller's circumstances change before the date arrives.
How the seller's five-year tax clock reaches your side of the table
A foreign seller who bought within the last five years owes Turkish tax on the gain, which gives them a direct financial interest in understating the price written on your deed, and the cost of that understatement lands on you years later. Turkish law taxes the gain on a property sold within five years of acquisition and exempts it after five years, and the rule applies to residents and non-residents alike because the property is the source of the income.
The taxable figure is not the raw difference between the two prices. Acquisition cost is indexed before the gain is calculated, an annual exemption is deducted, and the remainder is taxed on the progressive income tax scale. In an inflationary environment the indexation matters a great deal, which is why a seller's own accountant may reach a smaller number than the seller feared.
None of that changes the seller's incentive at the counter. A lower declared price reduces the seller's taxable gain and their 2% share of the tapu harcı at the same time. The Harçlar Kanunu sets a floor by requiring the fee to be calculated on no less than the property's emlak vergisi değeri (municipal assessed value), and it allows the difference to be assessed later where the declared figure does not reflect reality. Between that floor and the real price there is room, and a seller inside the five year window will look for it.
The arithmetic on your side runs in the opposite direction. Take a flat agreed at EUR 200,000 in August 2026 where the parties declare EUR 150,000. The buyer's 2% share of the fee falls by EUR 1,000. The buyer's recorded acquisition cost also falls by EUR 50,000, so if that buyer sells inside their own five year window, the declared gain is EUR 50,000 larger than it needed to be. Turkish income tax on that band starts at 15%, which puts the deferred exposure at EUR 7,500 before indexation and before the higher rates that a larger gain reaches. A buyer who accepts the seller's suggestion has traded EUR 1,000 today for roughly seven times that later.
| Party | Effect of understating the deed price | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Foreign seller inside five years | Smaller taxable gain and smaller fee share | Immediate |
| Foreign seller after five years | Smaller fee share only, gain already exempt | Immediate |
| You as buyer | Smaller fee share now, larger taxable gain on your own exit | Deferred |
| You as citizenship applicant | Measured on the declared figure, so understating can drop you below USD 400,000 | At application |
A seller past the five year mark has far less reason to press the point, which is one reason the acquisition date on the register is worth reading even when you have no interest in the seller's tax affairs.
What happens when the seller lives abroad and signs by proxy
A foreign owner selling from another country almost always transfers through a vekaletname (power of attorney), and the validity of that document, not the seller's willingness, sets your completion date. Turkish notarial rules require a power of attorney intended for land registry business to be drawn up in düzenleme şekli, the formal drafting method rather than mere signature certification, and to carry a photograph of the person granting it.
Powers of attorney executed before a local notary abroad frequently fail both requirements, because most foreign notarial systems certify signatures rather than draft instruments and do not attach photographs. A Turkish consulate solves both problems at once, which is why the consular route is the reliable one even though it takes longer to arrange.
A second question sits behind validity, which is whether the document is still alive. A Turkish power of attorney carries no automatic expiry and runs until it is revoked, until the work it covers is complete, or until one of the events that ends an agency relationship occurs. Since December 2025 revocations are recorded in the Türkiye Azil Sistemi, the national revocation system operated by the Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü under circular 2025/6, which gives the land registry a way to see that a document presented at the counter has been cancelled.
The failure mode is specific and worth naming. A sale collapses at the counter not because the seller changed their mind but because the representative arrives with a document that was drafted in the wrong form, lacks a photograph, or was revoked without anyone telling the agent. None of those facts is visible in a scanned copy sent by email.
Ask for the power of attorney to be reviewed by your own lawyer before the appointment is booked rather than on the morning it is used. A document that needs to be redone at a consulate abroad adds weeks, and those weeks fall inside whatever deposit arrangement you have already signed.
What an absentee foreign owner leaves behind in the flat
Debts left by a previous owner do not become your personal liability, but two of them stop the transfer from happening at all, which turns them from a risk into a scheduling problem. An owner who has spent years in another country accumulates a characteristic pattern of loose ends.
Unpaid property tax is the clearest case. The Emlak Vergisi Kanunu directs land registry offices to query the municipality's system electronically during a transfer and prohibits the transfer of a building or land carrying a property tax debt, with narrow exceptions for inheritance, court decisions, enforced sale and expropriation. The older rule, under which buyer and seller were jointly liable for unpaid property tax, no longer applies, and a great deal of English language material still repeats it. The correct instruction is not to fear inheriting the debt but to establish that the debt is cleared before an appointment is booked.
Inheritance is the second blocker and appears more often in older foreign-owned stock than buyers expect. Where the seller acquired the flat by inheritance, the registration itself does not wait for the inheritance tax, but the sale does. Land registry officials cannot complete a transfer without a clearance certificate from the tax office. A seller whose name appears on the register as owner can therefore be genuinely unable to sell.
Aidat (the building service charge) works differently again. Unpaid service charges of a previous owner do not become the new owner's personal debt. What can attach to the flat is a statutory mortgage registered in favour of the other owners for a court-established unpaid amount, and that entry, once registered, travels with the property and ranks ahead of other claims. The instruction is to read the encumbrance list rather than to assume the arrears follow you.
| What the absent owner leaves | Does it become your debt? | Does it stop the transfer? | What to do before you commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unpaid emlak vergisi (property tax) | No | Yes | Require a municipal clearance before booking the appointment |
| Unpaid inheritance tax on an inherited flat | No | Yes | Ask for the tax office clearance certificate |
| Unpaid aidat with a statutory mortgage registered | It attaches to the flat | Not automatically | Read the encumbrance list on the register |
| Unpaid aidat with nothing registered | No | No | Take a written building management statement and a contractual warranty |
| Utility subscriptions in the former owner's name | No | No | Budget for reconnection deposits in your own name |
| Lapsed DASK earthquake policy | No | Yes, a valid policy is needed | Arrange the policy as part of the transfer file |
A flat that has stood empty for two winters also carries physical questions that no register answers, including damp, dead appliances and a boiler nobody has serviced. Those belong in the price rather than in the legal file.
Does VAT change when you buy from a foreign owner?
Value added tax does not arise on a resale between individuals regardless of anyone's nationality, because the exemption that foreign buyers hear about applies only to a first delivery from a developer. A buyer approaching a resale flat with the VAT exemption in mind is applying a rule that has no work to do.
The exemption itself sits in article 13 of the VAT law and applies to the first delivery of a residence or commercial unit to a buyer not resident in Turkey who pays in foreign currency. It carries four conditions together, including that at least 25% of the price arrives before the invoice date with the remainder within a year, that the building holds a construction permit, and that the property is held for three years after registration.
That last condition is the one that reaches a resale transaction, and it reaches it from the seller's side. A foreign owner who bought a new flat under the exemption and sells inside the three year window triggers a liability for the previously exempted VAT. The liability is theirs rather than yours. Its effect on you is a matter of timing and negotiating position, because a seller facing an unexpected assessment may stall, reprice or withdraw.
Two separate three year periods circulate in the market and they are frequently confused. One is the VAT exemption holding condition. The other is the citizenship restriction annotation. They come from different legislation, serve different purposes and can run at different times on the same flat. A seller who says the three years are up has answered only one of the two questions, and you have to establish which.
The residual instruction on VAT is short. Establish the date the seller acquired the flat and whether they bought it new from a developer under the foreign buyer exemption. If both are true and the three years are not complete, expect the transaction to move slowly.
The due diligence items that change when the seller is foreign
The checks themselves are the ordinary Turkish purchase checks, and what changes is which of them carry a higher probability of returning a problem. Working through them in order of what stops a transaction fastest saves the most time.
| Check | What you ask for | Who provides it | If the answer is bad |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current ownership and nationality | Tapu kayıt örneği dated within days | Land registry, via the seller or your lawyer | Citizenship route closed, decide whether you still want the flat |
| Acquisition history of the parcel | Deed history, not just the current entry | Your lawyer at the land registry | A post-2017 foreign transfer closes the citizenship route |
| Restriction annotations | Beyanlar column of the extract | Same extract | A live restriction means the flat is not for sale yet |
| Encumbrances | Takyidat listesi (encumbrance list) | Same extract | Statutory mortgage for aidat travels with the flat |
| Property tax status | Municipal clearance | Alanya municipality | Transfer is blocked until cleared |
| Inheritance route | Whether acquisition was by intikal | Register entry | Tax office clearance certificate required |
| Power of attorney | The instrument itself, in advance | Seller's representative | Wrong form or revoked means weeks of delay |
| Marital status of the seller | Direct question plus family home annotation | Seller and register | Spousal consent required for a family home |
| Iskan and title type | Habitation certificate and whether kat mülkiyeti or kat irtifakı | Seller and municipality | Affects utilities, financing and value |
| Building arrears and management | Written statement from the building management | Site yönetimi | Negotiate or warrant in the contract |
Two documents do most of the work on that list. A current register extract answers ownership, annotations and encumbrances at once. A lawyer's review of the deed history answers the citizenship questions that the extract alone cannot.
One item that buyers often add is unnecessary. Since circular 2024/4 of the Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü took effect in June 2024, an SPK licensed valuation report is no longer required for an ordinary sale, and it remains mandatory only for citizenship and residence permit applications. A foreign seller has no bearing on that question either way.
An Alanya example: the same flat, two different buyers
The same foreign-owned flat can be an excellent purchase and an impossible one at the same time, depending only on what the buyer intends to do with it. Working the numbers on a single property shows where the seller's passport costs money and where it costs nothing.
Take a two bedroom apartment in Oba, a neighbourhood in the Alanya district of Antalya province, offered at EUR 343,000 in August 2026. At the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye buying rates of 25 August 2026, which put the euro at TRY 55.9892 and the US dollar at TRY 48.0117, that price is approximately USD 400,300. The owner is a Swedish national who bought the flat new in 2019.
Buyer A wants a Turkish passport. The flat is registered to a foreign natural person, so it fails the guidance condition before anything else is examined. The price being just above USD 400,000 is irrelevant, the valuation report is irrelevant, and the seller's willingness is irrelevant. Buyer A's cost of proceeding is the whole purpose of the purchase. The correct move is to stop and look at Turkish-owned stock, accepting that the comparable Turkish-owned flat may be priced higher precisely because it can serve this purpose.
Buyer B wants a holiday home and rental income. For Buyer B the seller's nationality changes nothing about eligibility and adds six checks. The seller bought in 2019, so the five year window has passed and the seller has no tax reason to press for an understated deed price. The flat was bought new in 2019, so any VAT exemption holding period is long complete. The seller lives in Sweden, so a power of attorney is near certain and needs reviewing early. Property tax, aidat and utilities need a clearance sweep. Buyer B proceeds on ordinary terms.
| Line | Buyer A, citizenship | Buyer B, holiday home |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible to buy the flat | Yes | Yes |
| Flat qualifies for the intended purpose | No | Yes |
| Tapu harcı at 4% of declared value | Same | Same |
| SPK valuation report | Mandatory, but the flat fails anyway | Not required |
| Extra time from the seller being abroad | Same | Same, roughly two to four weeks for a consular power of attorney |
| Effect of the seller's passport | Fatal | Six additional checks |
The comparison also explains a price pattern that puzzles buyers. Where two similar Alanya flats differ in price without differing in condition, the ownership history is one of the variables doing the work, because a Turkish-owned flat in the USD 400,000 citizenship band, as that band stood in August 2026, serves a buyer pool that a foreign-owned flat cannot reach.
One further Alanya-specific factor sits alongside this and belongs to residence rather than ownership. Four of the Alanya neighbourhoods most popular with foreign buyers, namely Kargıcak, Mahmutlar, Kestel and Avsallar, appear on the Presidency of Migration Management's published list of neighbourhoods closed to new residence permit registration. Owning a Turkish property has never by itself produced a residence permit, and in those neighbourhoods the registration question needs its own answer from the provincial directorate.
What to ask before you make an offer on a foreign-owned flat
Five questions in order will tell you whether to continue, and the first two are the ones that end conversations. Asking them before a deposit changes hands costs nothing and saves the money that reservation payments put at risk.
- Ask who is currently registered as the owner and of what nationality. A foreign natural person on the register closes the citizenship route immediately and leaves an ordinary purchase open.
- Ask whether any foreign national has transferred the property since 12 January 2017. A Turkish seller does not settle this question, and only the deed history answers it.
- Ask whether the property has previously been used for a citizenship application. One use exhausts it permanently.
- Ask when and how the seller acquired Turkish citizenship, where the seller is Turkish. Citizenship by investment puts the seller back into the excluded category despite the Turkish identity card.
- Ask for a register extract dated this week, including the declarations column. Live restrictions, family home annotations and encumbrances all surface in the same document.
A buyer with no interest in citizenship can skip the first four questions and start at the fifth, adding the clearance sweep for property tax, inheritance tax and building arrears.
Say plainly what you are trying to achieve when you first speak to an agent. An agent who knows a passport is the goal can filter the inventory before you fly out. An agent who does not know it will show you the flats that match your budget, and in Alanya's upper price band a large share of those flats belong to foreign owners.