“We sell seven to eight units to Russians every day,” said Gul Gul, co-founder of the Golden Sign real estate company in Istanbul. “They buy with cash, open bank accounts in Turkey or bring gold.” In Dubai, Thiago Caldas, CEO of the real estate company Modern Living, has hired three Russian-speaking agents to cover Russian interest, which he says has increased tenfold. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register The sanctions imposed after the February 24 invasion include the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT banking system and the targeting of individuals such as oligarchs believed to be close to President Vladimir Putin. While Turkey and the United Arab Emirates have criticized the Russian attack, Ankara opposes non-UN sanctions on Russia and the two countries have relatively good ties with Moscow and continue to operate direct flights, possibly offering routes to the Russians and cash. their. “They are rich Russians but not oligarchs,” Gul told Golden Sign, one of dozens of real estate companies, in an interview with Reuters. “They are finding ways to bring their money to Turkey.” “There are customers who buy three to five apartments,” Gul added. The Russians have been big buyers of Turkish real estate for years, behind Iranians and Iraqis, but real estate agents said there has been a sharp rise in demand in recent weeks. Although it is still early, industry figures are strengthening their accounts. In February, as troops gathered on Ukraine’s border before advancing, the Russians bought 509 homes in Turkey, almost double the number they snatched last year, according to the country’s statistics service. These data were even before the Western sanctions prevailed and real estate agents said they expected the numbers to increase further, increasing the demand that had already begun since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ibrahim Babacan, whose company builds and sells real estate in Istanbul mainly for foreign buyers in Turkey, said that in the past many Russians wanted to live in resorts such as the Mediterranean region of Antalya. Now they were buying apartments in Istanbul to invest their money. Reuters contacted some Russian home buyers, but they refused to give interviews due to the sensitivity of the situation. THOUSANDS AND MILLIONS Both Turkey and the United Arab Emirates offer accommodation incentives to property buyers. In Turkey, foreigners who pay $ 250,000 for a property and keep it for three years can get a Turkish passport. For a slightly smaller amount, Dubai, a major business hub in the Middle East, offers a three-year residence visa. Apartments worth 750,000 dirhams ($ 205,000) – the visa limit – have seen most of the demand, but more expensive properties on artificial islands such as Dubai’s glamorous Palm Jumeirah have been bought for up to 6 million dirhams, according to professionals. of real estate. . An overview of the houses at Balqis Residence in Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, UAE, March 25, 2022. Photo was taken on March 25, 2022. REUTERS / Christopher Pike read more “Investors are seeking both capital protection and the opportunity to obtain a temporary residence visa in the UAE for temporary relocation,” said Elena Milisenkova of Tranio, a Moscow-Berlin real estate agency that focuses on Russian clients buying real estate abroad. . Her company received almost three times more requests for apartments in Dubai in the first three months of 2022 compared to the same period last year, she said. Some companies say the demand is even higher. “Right at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, we launched a campaign in the area and the number of people who contacted us was … at least 10 times higher than usual,” said Caldas of Dubai’s Modern Living. The CEO, who hired Russian-speaking agents last week, said the really rich buyers seemed to be making preparations and transferring funds out of Russia even before the war broke out a month ago. CASH AND CRYPTONE For Russians who have bank accounts in Dubai, the process is relatively simple, said Elena Timchenko of the emirate-based Royal Home Real Estate broker. Others have turned to friends or contacts for help, but for some, the challenge of raising money for a purchase has so far been excessive, he added. “The desire to buy in Dubai is one thing, the ability to do so is another,” he said, referring to the difficulty of raising funds in the Gulf state. Some newly arrived Russians in Turkey have found it difficult to make deposits and transfers to banks that are wary of violating sanctions. Additional levels of compliance and exclusion from Visa and Mastercard add to the difficulty. read more The UAE issued guidelines to banks last year to step up suspicious transaction procedures in a bid to stem illegal financial flows. This has not prevented the country, like Turkey, from being added to a list of countries monitored by the FATF’s global financial crime watchdog. read more A senior Emirates bank official said the bank had carried out the same customer checks as before and had not received any new guidance from the central bank. In Istanbul, meanwhile, Babacan, a builder and real estate salesman, said that so far these Russian customers he was dealing with were paying through banks without any problems. Caldas and Alex Cihanoglu, a broker also based in Turkey’s largest city, said some Russians were using cryptocurrency-converted cash now that sanctions had made financial transfers more complicated. “I would say that most of the transactions we see are encrypted,” Caldas added. “Crypto, especially for this market now, in the difficulties they face, is the channel used.” Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Additional references by Ceyda Caglayan and Jonathan Spicer in Istanbul, and Saeed Azhar, Riham Alkousaa, Lisa Barrington and Alexander Cornwell in Dubai. Written by Ezgi Erkoyun and Dominic Evans. Curated by Pravin Char Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
