While Turkey is "healing the wounds" inflicted by the recent tremors, owners and real estate agents are trying to cash in on the situation. Having exorbitantly inflated the prices for rent and sale of housing in some areas where the earthquake victims have moved.
For obvious reasons, people do not want to stay in the tents provided for a long time in winter; the number of places in hotels is not infinite, and not everyone has relatives and friends in other regions. Therefore, everyone who can, is trying to rent apartments for themselves and their families.
So, in the areas adjacent to the affected areas, rental rates are growing by leaps and bounds. For example, rental prices in Konya, one of the provinces where the most people from earthquake–affected areas arrived, increased by 40% in a matter of days compared to the first days of February (before the tremors).
The Konya Province Trade Department, having discovered this situation (complaints from local residents, which came to the department in abundance, helped to identify it in many ways), undertook to check prices for everything – up to food, cleaning products and hygiene products. The rates for rental housing have not been spared. Reports are also sent to the Ministry of Commerce – to the Council that monitors unfairly set tariffs. If this Council confirms exorbitantly inflated rental prices in comparison with the situation before the earthquake – for example, there will be evidence that an apartment previously rented for 4 000 - 5 000 Turkish lira (TL) is now rented for 7 000, and the one for 7 000 is offered for 10 000, then violators may be fined in up to 100 000 TL.
Earlier it was reported that the victims of the earthquake began to provide monetary compensation and various housing options, including prefabricated houses.