How to plan a property viewing trip to Alanya

A property viewing trip to Alanya is a short organised visit in which a foreign buyer inspects shortlisted apartments and checks the documents behind them, and in Turkey it is normally paid for by the selling side. That payment shapes everything else, because agencies refund the flights only on completion, which turns the trip into a discount consumed before negotiation begins on a price where the agency service fee is capped at 4% and split equally between the parties unless they agree otherwise in writing. Gazipaşa-Alanya airport lies about 40 km from the centre against roughly 125 km for Antalya, so the airport decides whether arrival and departure cost under two hours or nearly five. On the ground, four documents settle most questions: the title deed, the encumbrance list, the building permit date, which determines whether the block was designed under the earthquake code in force since 1 January 2019, and the occupancy permit, without which a building cannot lawfully take electricity, water or sewage connections. A title deed still recorded as kat irtifakı (construction servitude) is itself a signal, because Turkish law converts that title into full kat mülkiyeti (condominium ownership) on the basis of the occupancy permit for the whole building. One check has nothing to do with the apartment at all: Kargıcak, Mahmutlar, Kestel and Avsallar all appear on the migration authority's published list of neighbourhoods closed to new foreign residence registration, so owning a flat and being allowed to register an address in it are separate questions. Nothing needs to be signed before the flight home, because deposits under the Türk Borçlar Kanunu (Turkish Code of Obligations) do not forfeit automatically unless the contract says they do.

What is a property viewing trip, and what is it not?

A property viewing trip is a short organised visit during which a foreign buyer inspects shortlisted properties on site, and in the Turkish market it is a sales channel rather than a travel service. Turkish agencies market the same visit under three names: viewing trip, inspection trip and inspection tour. The three names describe one commercial arrangement, in which the agency arranges the schedule, the driver, the interpreter and often the hotel, and recovers the cost from the sale.

Alanya, a district of Antalya province on Turkey's central Mediterranean coast, sits at the centre of this channel because its buyer base is almost entirely foreign and almost entirely remote. A buyer in Oslo or Rotterdam cannot walk past the building on a Tuesday evening, so the two or three days on the ground carry the weight that months of casual local observation carry at home.

That weight is what defines the trip. The viewing trip is not the moment you buy, and it is not a holiday with appointments attached. It is a narrow window in which you can do the things that cannot be done from a laptop: read a title deed at the land registry counter, stand in the flat at the hour you would actually live in it, talk to the site manager without the seller present, and confirm that the address you are about to commit to is one where you can legally register as a resident.

Who actually pays for a "free" inspection trip to Turkey?

You pay for it, in the purchase price, and you pay again in negotiating position. Turkish agencies advertise the trip as free, and their own pages set out the mechanism openly: if you buy, the flight tickets are refunded or deducted from the property price for up to two people; if you do not buy, you are quoted for accommodation and transfers. A cost that returns to you only on completion is not a gift. It is a discount that has been spent before you sat down to negotiate.

The second cost is less visible and larger. A hosted trip locks your entire viewing sample to one company's stock. You will see the properties that company can earn on, in the order it chooses, with the driving time between them controlled by the person selling them. Nothing improper needs to happen for this to distort the outcome. A buyer who has seen eleven apartments from one source believes they have seen the market.

Turkish law puts a ceiling on what the agency side can charge but does not stop the price from carrying the trip. Under the Taşınmaz Ticareti Hakkında Yönetmelik (Regulation on Real Estate Trading), the service fee in a sale cannot exceed 4% of the sale price excluding VAT, and unless the parties agree otherwise in writing it is shared equally between them. On a EUR 150,000 apartment, priced as at August 2026, that legal ceiling is EUR 6,000 in total and EUR 3,000 on the buyer's side. Two refunded return flights sit somewhere inside that figure, not outside it.

Agency-hosted trip or self-funded trip: which one leaves you in control?

A self-funded trip costs more in cash and gives up less bargaining room, and the workable answer for most buyers is a hybrid: accept the hosted days, but pay for one day of your own. The variable that matters is not the money. It is whose car you are in when you decide you want to see something that was not on the schedule.

The two formats differ on six points that all show up on the ground.

The hybrid works because the two formats fail in different places. A hosted programme is genuinely efficient at logistics and genuinely poor at breadth. A day on your own, ideally the first one, fixes the breadth problem before the schedule closes around you. Book the hire car before you fly, because the orientation drive is worth more on day one than on day four.

Is the agency showing you its own stock, or acting as an agent?

Ask one question at the first viewing: are you selling this flat, or are you brokering it? The answer changes which rules apply. The Taşınmaz Ticareti Hakkında Yönetmelik defines real estate trading in Article 4/1/k as brokerage in the purchase, sale, marketing and letting of property. A developer selling units from its own project is a party to the sale, not a broker, so the 4% ceiling and the fee regime have no fee to attach themselves to. That is not a loophole and it is not misconduct. It is a different legal relationship, and it is common in Alanya, where a large share of new-build sales to foreign buyers comes directly from the builder.

The distinction has three consequences you can act on during the trip. First, a company that brokers must hold a Taşınmaz Ticareti Yetki Belgesi (real estate trading authorisation certificate), which you can check yourself on the Ministry of Trade's TTBS query screen at ttbs.gtb.gov.tr without an account. Second, the regulation requires at least one responsible consultant in the business to hold a Level 5 Mesleki Yeterlilik Belgesi (vocational qualification certificate), which is a separate question from whether the company is certified. Third, the regulation expressly contemplates an authorisation contract in which the client is the buyer, so asking for a written agreement on your own side is a recognised form, not an awkward demand.

One document appears in the car rather than the office. The regulation requires a taşınmaz gösterme belgesi (property viewing form) for each showing, in at least two copies, one of which stays with you. It must carry the company's authorisation number, the responsible consultant's signature, your identity and foreign identity number, the property's title deed details and address, the date and purpose of the showing, and the service fee rate or amount. A form that does not state the fee, or that lists five addresses under one signature, does not meet the regulation. The same regulation also forbids charging you anything for the showing itself, and obliges the agent to give you enough time to read a document before signing it and to hand you a copy of everything you sign.

Which airport should you fly into: Gazipaşa or Antalya?

Gazipaşa-Alanya (GZP) is about 40 km from Alanya centre and roughly 35 to 50 minutes by road, while Antalya (AYT) is about 120 to 125 km away and takes two to two and a half hours. Gazipaşa is the closer airport by a wide margin and the thinner one by an equally wide margin, so most buyers end up at Antalya whether they intend to or not.

The arithmetic decides the shape of the trip rather than the comfort of the arrival. A return through Antalya costs roughly four to five hours of road time. On a four-day trip that is not a travel detail. It is half a viewing day, and it is the half that gets taken from the end of the schedule, when your shortlist visits should be happening.

Two planning rules follow. Check Gazipaşa first if you are flying from Scandinavia or Germany, because a direct route there converts into viewing time on the same calendar days. Build the Antalya transfer into the plan as a scheduled block if you land there, rather than assuming the first afternoon is usable, and put the shortlist revisits on day three rather than day four.

When is the best time of year to view property in Alanya?

Agencies recommend spring and autumn, and for their purposes they are right, but a buyer who will own the flat for years should see Alanya at least once in January or February. April and October give you the pleasant version of the coast, which is the version that sells. Winter gives you the version you are actually buying, and it answers questions no photograph answers.

The winter visit is not about weather tolerance. It is about occupancy and operating reality, both of which you can observe directly. Walk the site in the evening and count lit windows. Ask which months the pool is filled and whether it is heated. Look at whether the restaurants and the market on the street below are trading or shuttered. Ask the management for the aidat (service charge) statement covering December to February rather than the annual average, because winter is when heating, damp and low collection rates show up in the accounts.

The compromise that costs least is a two-visit plan. Use a shoulder-season trip to build the shortlist and a short winter trip to confirm the finalist, and put the deposit decision after the second visit rather than the first. Buyers who cannot make two trips should at least ask for the winter service charge statement and the winter photographs of the site, then treat a refusal as information.

How many properties can you realistically see in one day?

Agency itineraries commonly promise five viewings a day, and five is a seller's number rather than a buyer's number. Four to six flats is physically possible in Alanya, where the coastal neighbourhoods sit within a short drive of each other. Retaining useful, comparable detail about five apartments seen in one day is a different problem, and it is the one that decides whether the trip works.

Decision fatigue shows up in a predictable pattern. The first two viewings get scrutiny, the third and fourth get compared to the first two, and the fifth gets a verdict formed in the car. A buyer who has seen fifteen units across three days will remember two clearly and will have merged the rest. That is why the fifteen-unit trip often ends with the buyer choosing the flat seen on the first morning, which is the one they had the attention to examine.

Three rules keep the sample usable. Cap the day at four viewings and use the recovered time for a second visit to yesterday's best. Revisit shortlisted flats at a different hour of the day than the first viewing, because sun on the balcony, noise from the street, traffic on the coastal road and the availability of parking all change between eleven in the morning and seven in the evening. Photograph the same four things in every flat, which are the electrical panel, the bathroom ceiling, the balcony view line and the corridor outside the front door, so the comparison later is between records rather than impressions.

A day-by-day plan for a four-day Alanya viewing trip

Four days is enough if the first day is yours and the third day is for verification rather than viewing. The common failure is a schedule that fills all four days with appointments and leaves the paperwork to be done under time pressure on the morning of departure.

Each day needs a rule for what happens when it overruns. If day 1 produces no candidate, do not extend the viewing count on day 2, because the problem is the neighbourhood filter rather than the sample size. If the documents requested on day 2 have not arrived by the morning of day 3, treat that as the answer and move the shortlist to the property whose documents did arrive. If day 3 ends with an unresolved question about title, the trip has succeeded, because you found the question while you were still free to walk away.

What can you only do while you are physically in Alanya?

A surprising amount of the purchase can be done remotely, which makes the physical days more valuable, not less, because they should be spent on the things that genuinely require presence. Turkish law lets a properly authorised representative complete a transfer, and the currency conversion that produces the döviz alım belgesi (foreign currency purchase certificate) can be carried out by the buyer, the seller or their representatives. Presence is not the legal requirement people assume it is.

Six things need you, or need a day in Turkey, and they are the ones worth protecting on the schedule.

• Standing in the flat at the hour you would use it, which decides aspect, noise, light and stair or lift dependence, and cannot be delegated to anyone whose money is not at stake.
• Meeting the site management in person, because the useful answers about service charges, arrears and rules are given in conversation and rarely in writing to a stranger by email.
• Reading the land registry record and the encumbrance list, which under the Tapu Sicili Tüzüğü can be queried against an identity number or the ada and parsel (block and plot) numbers of the property.
• Opening a Turkish bank account, which for a foreign national without a Turkish identity card generally means a branch visit, because the BDDK regulation on remote customer onboarding defines the identity document as the Turkish identity card.
• Attending a residence permit appointment, which the Directorate General of Migration Management requires in person: an applicant who misses the appointment without a valid excuse is treated as never having applied.
• Signing at the land registry or before a notary, since a Turkish property sale contract must be signed in wet ink in the presence of the officer, by you or by your representative.

Two administrative tasks do not need a trip at all. The Turkish tax number can be applied for through the Revenue Administration's own online form for foreign nationals, which asks for name, gender, foreign identity number, place of birth, parents' names, country, passport number, telephone and address, along with an upload of the passport identity page. Power of attorney can be drawn up abroad, provided it meets the Turkish form requirements. Spending a viewing day queuing for either of these is a poor use of the window.

Which documents should you ask to see at each viewing?

Ask for seven items, and ask at the viewing rather than after the deposit, because every one of them is easier to obtain while the seller still wants your offer. The agent's own regulation already requires the authorisation contract to record the property's zoning and occupancy permit status, title deed record, size, age, actual use, floor and aspect, and whether there is a mortgage, attachment or similar restriction on it. You are asking for information the agency is obliged to hold.

Two items in that list carry legal consequences that buyers underestimate. Under the Kat Mülkiyeti Kanunu, unpaid common expenses can result in a statutory mortgage registered against the individual flat in favour of the other owners, and a registered charge of that kind travels with the property, so the instruction is to read the encumbrance list rather than to trust a statement about debts. Separately, a property carrying unpaid municipal property tax cannot be transferred at all: the Emlak Vergisi Kanunu requires the land registry to query the tax debt electronically and forbids the transfer where a debt exists. That is a scheduling problem rather than a risk you inherit, but it is a scheduling problem you want to discover in August rather than at the counter.

Does the flat you are standing in match the flat on the title deed?

Check the bağımsız bölüm (independent unit) number, the floor and the block against the tapu while you are inside the apartment, because a viewing is the only moment when the document and the physical unit are in the same room. Buyers treat the documents and the flat as two separate exercises, one for the lawyer and one for themselves. The mismatch between them is the thing a lawyer reading papers in another city cannot catch.

The Kat Mülkiyeti Kanunu identifies what you are buying as a bağımsız bölüm within an anagayrimenkul (the whole property), tied to an arsa payı (share of the underlying land) that must be calculated in proportion to each unit's position and size. Four identifiers therefore have to agree: the ada and parsel numbers of the plot, the block, the floor, and the unit number. In Alanya's larger sites, buildings are often lettered and units renumbered after construction, so the number on the door, the number on the post box and the number on the deed are not automatically the same.

Five checks take ten minutes and belong in every viewing.

• Photograph the door number, the post box and the meter cabinet label, then compare all three against the unit number written on the tapu.
• Count the floors from outside before you go up, because a ground floor built on a slope is sold as a first floor more often than any other discrepancy in the district.
• Ask for the mimari proje (architectural drawing) for that unit and compare the enclosed areas, since a glazed balcony or a roofed terrace added after the permit is exactly what the occupancy permit certifies against.
• Run the taps and the shower on the floor you are on, because water pressure in upper flats depends on a booster pump that the viewing appointment will not reveal.
• Read the arsa payı on the deed, and query it if the share looks small against comparable units, since the Kat Mülkiyeti Kanunu allows an owner to apply to court for land shares to be redistributed where they were not allocated in proportion.

The arsa payı check is worth the two minutes it takes because the number does more than sit on a deed. It determines the unit's weight in owners' meetings and its share of common expenses, so a flat with an understated land share carries a permanently understated vote and a permanently overstated bill relative to its size.

How do you check the building was built to the 2018 earthquake code?

Read the date on the yapı ruhsatı, not the age of the building, because the Türkiye Bina Deprem Yönetmeliği was published in the Resmî Gazete of 18 March 2018, issue 30364 (repeated), and its Article 5 states that it entered into force on 1 January 2019. A building permitted in 2018 and finished in 2020 looks new and was designed under the previous rules. The same regulation repealed the Deprem Bölgelerinde Yapılacak Binalar Hakkında Yönetmelik published on 6 March 2007, so a permit date tells you which of the two regimes governed the design.

Three practical points follow from the regulation's own text. Its stated scope reaches past new construction to the evaluation and strengthening of existing buildings under earthquake effects, so a structural assessment of an older block is a defined procedure rather than an improvised favour. A permit date before 2019 does not make a building unlawful or unsafe, because it was built under the code then in force, and treating every pre-2019 apartment as a reject would eliminate most of Alanya's resale stock. What the date does is tell you which questions to ask and whether an independent assessment is worth commissioning before you commit.

What you cannot do is assess the structure by looking at it. Cracks in plaster, fresh paint and a modern kitchen carry no information about column detailing or the soil beneath the foundation. If the permit date matters to you, ask the management for the statik proje (structural design) and the zemin etüdü (soil survey), and have an independent civil engineer read them. Note also that DASK is compulsory earthquake insurance and not a certificate of structural adequacy: the registry requires a valid policy for the transfer, and the policy makes no statement about how the building will behave.

Can you get a residence permit at that address? Check before you make an offer

Turkish property ownership and Turkish residence registration are separate regimes, and Alanya's four most heavily foreign-bought neighbourhoods have been on the migration authority's closed list. The Directorate General of Migration Management publishes closure announcements with a downloadable list of neighbourhoods shut to new foreign registrations. The announcement records 781 neighbourhoods closed initially and the number raised to 1,169 as of 1 July 2022, with the closure applying to residence permits and to changes of province of residence, and with newborns and core family reunification as the stated exceptions.

The attached list is where this stops being general and becomes an Alanya problem. Rows 145 to 148 of the authority's own file name Kargıcak, Mahmutlar, Kestel and Avsallar, all four in the Alanya district of Antalya province, and all four among the neighbourhoods most often sold to foreign buyers. A buyer who purchases in a closed neighbourhood still receives a valid tapu. What they do not receive is the ability to register their address there and build a residence permit on it.

The current status is the part no source can settle for you. Alanya local media reported in June 2026 that the four neighbourhoods had been reopened to applications, and a district politician was quoted to that effect, but no corresponding announcement appears on the migration authority's own site, where the most recent published attachment still dates from 2022. Closures and reopenings are administrative decisions that change without a live public status page. The instruction is therefore specific and unglamorous: before you sign anything, take the exact address to the provincial migration office, or have your lawyer do it, and get the answer for that neighbourhood on that date. Treat any figure quoted to you about a minimum property value for residence purposes with the same scepticism, since that threshold circulates widely on commercial sites without an official source behind it.

What should you ask the site manager, not the agent?

The site manager is the only person on your viewing trip with detailed knowledge of the building and no commission riding on your decision. Twenty minutes with the yönetici (building manager) produces information the selling side has no obligation to volunteer, and the meeting is easy to arrange while you are physically on site and nearly impossible to arrange afterwards from abroad.

Ask six questions, and ask for the answers in writing where a document exists.

• What is the actual monthly aidat for this flat, and what is the collection rate in the block? A high nominal charge that nobody pays produces a poorly maintained site and a special levy later.
• Are there arrears on this specific flat, and has any statutory mortgage been registered for them? The answer should match what you find on the encumbrance list, and a mismatch is worth pursuing.
• Which months is the pool filled, and is it heated? Marketing photographs do not distinguish between a pool that operates for eleven months and one that operates for four.
• What proportion of the flats are let short-term, and does the management plan permit it? This decides whether you have neighbours or a rotating population, and it decides whether your own letting plans are lawful in the building.
• How is water pressure on this floor, and are there scheduled cuts? Upper floors in older Alanya blocks depend on booster pumps, and the failure mode is seasonal.
• What restrictions does the management plan impose on pets, renovation and balcony glazing? These are enforceable rules registered with the building, not preferences.

Should you sign anything before you fly home?

No, and the pressure to do so on the last afternoon is the single most predictable event of a viewing trip. The offer that expires tonight is a sales technique. If the property is genuinely competitive, it will still be competitive in five days, and if it disappears in five days you have avoided a decision you made in an unfamiliar country under a deadline set by the other side.

The Turkish law on deposits makes the case for waiting rather than against it. Money handed over when a contract is made is treated by default as bağlanma parası (earnest money) under Article 177 of the Türk Borçlar Kanunu, which is evidence that a contract was concluded and which is deducted from the price. The dramatic outcome buyers are warned about, where the buyer who withdraws forfeits the money and the seller who withdraws repays double, arises under Article 178 and only if the parties actually agreed on cayma parası (earnest money giving a right to withdraw). Much English-language advice states the harsh rule as though it were automatic. It is not, and which rule applies depends on the wording of the document you sign, not on the label on the receipt.

There is also a form problem that cuts both ways. Contracts transferring ownership of registered property, and promises to sell such property, must be made in official form before a land registry officer or a notary. A handwritten reservation form signed in an agency office is often not the binding instrument either side believes it is, which weakens the forfeiture clause in it and equally weakens your ability to hold the property. The safe sequence is to go home, have the document reviewed, and sign in official form afterwards. A seller who will not wait for that is telling you something useful.

Worked example: what independence costs on an Alanya viewing trip

Independence on a viewing trip is priced in the low hundreds of euros, while the position it protects is worth thousands, and the arithmetic is worth doing before you accept a hosted programme. The comparison below uses a EUR 150,000 resale apartment in Mahmutlar, a coastal neighbourhood in the Alanya district of Antalya province, and converts Turkish lira figures at the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye buying rate of 1 EUR = 55.9939 TRY as of 24 August 2026.

The lawyer's side of the calculation has a published floor. The Avukatlık Asgari Ücret Tarifesi (minimum legal fee tariff), published in the Resmî Gazete of 4 November 2025, contains no line called "property purchase". Its closest item covers work carried out for the creation, determination, registration or transfer of a right, priced at 12,000 TRY for 2026. Written advice for the first hour is listed at 7,000 TRY, and verbal advice at the lawyer's office for the first hour at 4,000 TRY.

Two decision rules come out of the table. The tariff figures are floors rather than quotations, so a real invoice for a foreign-buyer file will exceed them, but even at three times the floor an independent review costs a fraction of the buyer-side fee it is checking. And the refunded flights only pay for themselves if they cost more than the negotiating room you gave up, which on the same August 2026 example means more than EUR 1,500 for two return tickets before a single percentage point of movement is worth trading away.

One further check belongs in the same calculation. Under Article 38/b of the Avukatlık Kanunu, a lawyer must refuse instructions where they have acted or advised for a party with opposing interests in the same matter, and the prohibition expressly extends to their partners and to the lawyers working with them. A lawyer introduced to you by the selling agency, from a firm that also acts for the developer, is therefore not simply an inconvenient choice. Ask who else in that firm is involved in the transaction.

Entry rules that can end the trip before it starts

Turkey requires your passport to remain valid for at least 60 days beyond the duration of stay your visa or exemption allows, which for a 90-day stay means 150 days of remaining validity. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs states the rule in exactly those terms and gives the 150-day figure as the worked example for a 90-day permission. Airlines apply the rule at check-in, so a passport with 149 days left produces a refused boarding at the departure airport rather than a discussion at Turkish passport control.

The second rule matters more to buyers than to tourists. Visa-exempt ordinary passport holders may stay up to 90 days in any 180-day period, and the 180-day window rolls forward rather than resetting on a calendar date. Multiple viewing trips consume days from that allowance. A buyer who spends three weeks across three trips and then plans a longer stay while a residence permit application is processed has less room than they assume, and the residence appointment itself must be attended in person.

Two practical consequences follow. Check the expiry date on your passport against the length of stay you are actually granted, since the rule is expressed as 60 days beyond that stay rather than as a fixed 150 days, and a shorter permission changes the number. Check your own nationality's requirement on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs pages rather than relying on a general statement, because visa requirements and permitted stays differ by country and change.