Selling a house

[sammydavis]

An interesting point has come to me regarding selling on a resale house.
If you have not applied to have your Kocan transferred into your own name, and the previous owner's passport is out of date when you then go to sell it on (even though you paid for it through solicitors and have a proper sale of contract) you can not then sell it unless you can get the previous owner to send/give you a copy of their up to date passport.
Apparently the solicitor acting for you in the purchase of your home should inform you of this necessity ie making sure you are aware of when your seller's passport is out of date and your applying to transfer the kocan before that date. It is the first I have heard of this and having bought two houses here I do not recall ever being made aware of this fact. There is no knowing if the previous owner would agree to sending a copy of their up to date passport or indeed if they have not bothered to renew it or even have died in the interim! I just wondered how many people are aware of this. Hopefully everyone gets their kocans transferred into their own name asap but wonder .......

[snd1966]

The rules have always been you get your permissions to purchase first therefore you should not be held by the previous owner but around 2000 and especially 2002/3 nobody seemed to follow the law
I wish I had gone to Unsal to purchase my property as he now advises You the purchaser gets power of attorney from the seller to enable the purchaser to continue their path of buying or selling if the correct paperwork has not gone through.

[sammydavis]

The Power of Attorney is only valid for a set time - I am not sure what that time is, however it may not be valid over say 5 years - so if someone does not get the Kocan changed into their name within the time of the previous owner's POA, they will not be able to sell without a copy of the current passport of the previous owner. I wonder if there are many people who have been caught in this trap and was it resolvable??

[sophie]

I suppose its too much to ask that the Estate Agents warns you of this when arranging a viewing.?

[ljarvo]

I believe the POA stays in place until that person dies that’s why people typically have two or three persons named on the POA... I may be wrong

What is key is that the POA is written to say they can receive the funds from a sale.

We had this happen once and we needed a new POA.

Some people opt to not get the Kocan and hold the property under a contract ...

[ozankoys]

Sophie the Estate Agent is working for the Vendor it is your Lawyer who SHOULD be responsible for safeguarding your interests
Yes the POA is valid until the donor dies or I think it can be revoked under certain circumstantances
Some conveyancing firms here use an ‘in house Notary’ which means that the POA has been ratified illegally and can therefore be revoked

[sophie]

There are more and more times when I wish we had gone down the Renting route and not the House buying route all those years back. Far less hassle I think.

Ozankoy, re your bit about Advocates being responsible for safeguarding your interests, this presumably is yet another reason why NOT to go via a Notary, be it inhouse or not?

[sammydavis]

All these points are interesting. I think that it has to be written in if a POA is for life, usually it is done in regard to the selling or buying of a house and then expires unless otherwise stated. That makes sense to me anyway and I for one, would not like my POA still be active when not required for my benefit at the time. The solicitor acting for we buyers should notify us of the need re expiry of sellers passport, not the Agent although it would be good if they took this on board as well. I just wondered if anyone has come across this problem before as it is the first I had heard of it when a friend is going through just this and can not now sell the house.

[ozankoys]

A Notary is most probably as good if not better than many of the so called lawyers here who do not accept any responsibilty when things go wrong as a lot of us have found to our cost.
As the POA have to be very specific i.e. to cover each & every procedure to do with the property in question & no other there is no danger of it being used for any other purpose.
It is as well to write down the salient points you need to cover & check they are included with the Notary at the time of writing, however some of the lawyers do write them in Turkish & English which is great for us non Turkish speakers!