Ali Duman, Professor of Islamic Law at the Faculty of Theology at Inonu University in Malatya, prepared a contract to rent his house in the Doğantepe Neighborhood of the Altındağ district of Ankara. In the contract, Duman determined the monthly rent as 7 grams of gold, the annual rent as 84 grams of gold and the deposit fee as $500.
“I FOUND THE MOST REASONABLE SYSTEM UNDER THE GRAM”
In a written statement to DHA, Prof. Dr. Duman stated that he developed such a method in order not to deal with malicious tenants and said, “When you rent out your house, even if the rent you set at the beginning of the year is high for the tenant at the beginning, for example, if it corresponds to 1/5 of his salary, it decreases by half at the end of the year, corresponding to 1/10. When I rented my house to a civil servant for 1500 liras years ago, his salary was around 7,500 liras. While the rent remained at 1500 for 1 year, the salary of this civil servant friend of ours came to approximately 12 thousand liras with the increases he received in January and July. Thus, the rent corresponded to 1/8 of his salary. When the government said there would be a 25 percent rent increase that year, our rent remained at 1800 liras. While 1/5 of 35 thousand liras would be 6,500-7 thousand under normal conditions, the rent remained at 2,500 liras and you could not increase it. The government When the 25 percent increases were stopped, you had to increase your rent by 300 or 400 percent to compensate for your 2-year loss, but that was not possible either. I found it appropriate to determine the rent in a way that would correspond to 1/5 of the salary of the civil servant tenant. I thought my tenant would also find this appropriate. However, in this case, I would have to constantly monitor my tenant’s salary, which is unethical. Instead, I thought of a system where the tenant would not be victimized and my rights would not be violated. I thought the most reasonable system would be to rent in grams of gold,” he said.
“THE LAWS ARE COMPLETELY AGAINST HOMEOWNERS”
Duman, who said that he decided to fix the rent at 7 grams of gold, which is equivalent to 19 thousand liras, said, “When the 15th of each month comes, the rent is determined by multiplying the gram of gold in the Grand Bazaar by the 7 grams of gold. In this way, I will not lose from the monthly inflation. Of course, I accept that this may seem a little negative for the tenants. As a way to solve this; I decided that if we fix the rent at 19 thousand or 20 thousand liras, so that the tenant does not get confused and we do not have to deal with the accounting, it would be more fair to make the annual increase based on 7 grams of gold when the time for the increase comes. Thus, I saw that even if my monthly rent melts away against the annual inflation, at the end of the year there will be a rent increase that will compensate for what I lost in the year. I also thought that it would be possible to protect myself from the negative effects of the inflation figures announced by the government in this way. Otherwise, I do not plan to rent my house. Because the laws regarding rent are completely against the landlords, tenants can victimize the landlords by renting out houses even if they own their own houses.”
CHAIRMAN OF THE CHAMBER OF REAL ESTATE AGENTS AKÇAM: TO INCREASE THE RENTAL PRICE
Ankara All Realtors Professional Association (ATEM) President Hakan Akçam said, “A colleague of ours contacted me after seeing the writing on the window of a rental house in the Altındağ district of Ankara. Based on this, I called the owner and asked how much rent he wanted. The owner said, ‘I want a rental fee equal to 7 grams of gold.’ I spoke to him like a normal citizen. He said he did not want a tradesman or a person who is engaged in trade. It is obvious that citizens are already having difficulty keeping up with housing prices in this environment. We witness and are saddened by such different requests from homeowners. But of course, it is not like every homeowner does this. We cannot put them all in the same category. Unfortunately, some such ill-intentioned homeowners take things in different directions, find different formulas and apply different methods to increase the annual increase or the rental fee.”
