Turkish property prices are soaring
A crazy interest-rate policy is mostly to blame
RENTS and property prices in Istanbul were never low to begin with. In 2015 a Qatari businessman, thought to be acting as a middleman for the country’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, spent over $100m for a villa on the banks of the Bosphorus, the strait that divides Turkey’s biggest city between Asia and Europe. Earlier this year, another mansion, formerly the home of a sex-cult leader recently sentenced to nearly 900 years in prison for a range of crimes, sold for $26m.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Going through the roof”
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