Side in Turkey - a quick break or somewhere to buy?
Saturday 10 Nov 2007 15:59
Overseas Property Investment
Tags: turkey, side, property, holidays, mediterranean, vacation, beach, villa's, apartments
We had Side, pronounced see-deh on the Mediterranean cost of Turkey recommended to us a good investment location for holiday properties, so at the end of September we popped over to check it out.
Our first issue was that it was quite limited for which UK airports flew to the nearest airport of Antalya and although cheap flights were advertised they were very hard to get hold of so it is no where near as cheap as going to some of the more established destinations in the Med.
Side itself is said to be one of the oldest holiday resorts in the world, Cleopatra is said to have bathed in the sea at Side with Mark Antony. There is some wonderful Roman heritage, as you walk into the town centre you walk over roman mosaics with the remains of roman shop buildings on either side of you and you enter the town centre through a roman gate next to an amphitheatre.
Until the 1980’s Side was a quite fishing village until German tourists found it, since then it has begun to expand and the area around the old peninsular of Side is being filled with apartment blocks. Perhaps to appeal to its predominantly German tourist trade the old town has the strange feel of a mock Bavarian village and is filled with nothing but Jewellery stores, tourist gifts, knock off designer clothing stalls and German resturants/bars.
The new town surrounding the old town of Side stretches mostly to the north following a developed beach area. The main road the follows the beach is highly developed with large hotels, bars and the same cheap gift and knock off clothing stalls as the main old town.
There is a rush to build holiday apartments and villa’s in Side and everyone you talk to from the barman to your hotel owner knows someone who can do you a deal on property. However having looked around there are large amounts of property available but it is very over priced, particularly if you are looking for an investment property. The best case scenario we were given for a rental property by the estate agents there was 10 weeks rental in a year.
There is a lot of building going on, mainly apartment complexes where they are packing as many apartments as possible on to the land, which means little or no views, no direct sunlight and being over looked by neihgbouring apartments.
I have noticed that prices have started to come down since we visited but they still have a long way to go yet.
Side is clean, the people are friendly and there are some stunning roman remains but the new developments and tacky shops left me thinking of Clacton or Cleethorpes circa 1975
We had Side, pronounced see-deh on the Mediterranean cost of Turkey recommended to us a good investment location for holiday properties, so at the end of September we popped over to check it out.
