The new head of Turkey’s central bank said rampant inflation has priced her out of Istanbul’s property market, leaving the former finance executive with no choice but to move back in with her parents.
“We haven’t found a home in Istanbul. It’s terribly expensive. We’ve moved in with my parents,” 44-year-old Hafize Gaye Erkan, who took up her post in June after two decades in the United States, told the Hurriyet newspaper.
Erkan previously worked at Goldman Sachs and First Republic Bank and is now getting a crash course in the soaring prices that have caused many young people to struggle to find lodgings.
“Is it possible that Istanbul has gotten more expensive than Manhattan?” she said.
In November, year-on-year inflation stood at 61 per cent. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan allowed the lira currency to weaken while promising that a new team of economists with Wall Street experience would tackle years of economic crisis.
To quell growing anger, officials also capped rent increases at 25 per cent. However, experts say this has only amplified housing tensions, as owners try to push out occupants to set new and higher rents, sometimes fraudulently.
Last month, the central bank raised benchmark lending rates to 40 per cent to control inflation.
“We’re nearing the end of our monetary tightening measures,” Erkan told the paper.
