The impacts of refugees and immigrants on Turkish housing sales and rental prices

Housing affordability is a rising problem all around the world.Trkiye is also tackling this issue seriously.Trkiye is ranked at the top of the list among the most refugee-hosted countries, the United Nations Refugee Agency reports.After the Civil War started in Syria in 2011, millions of Syrians migrated to different countries.Trkiye, which is struggling with many socioeconomic problems, hosts 4.6 million officially confirmed refugees, and 3.6 million of them are Syrians.Immigration of many Russian and Ukrainian citizens after the Russia-Ukraine war started in the first quarter of 2022, and their choice of living in Trkiye by way of purchasing housing units also had an impact on the Turkish housing sector in terms of supply-demand balance and sales and rental prices of housing units.By conducting a questionnaire, this study investigates the Turkish people's perception of the impacts of refugees and immigrants on Turkish housing sales and rental prices.The effects on unemployment rates, inflation rates and level of tax revenues were also analyzed as other macroeconomic factors.The results of responses of 157 respondents were analyzed by using R programming.The analysis revealed that 89% of the participants had the perception that the tax revenues had decreased due to unregistered work.This was followed by an increase in housing rental prices and unemployment rates.The analysis showed that age, gender, location, or industry had no statistically significant impact on the results.As one of the pioneer studies in this area, this research suggests some policies to overcome refugee-related problems, especially in the housing sector.