The Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) publishes the “Actual Rentals Paid by Tenants" index as a sub-item of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). However, in line with the CPI methodology, this index tracks the rent of the same dwelling over time, and as tenant turnover is infrequent, price changes in new leases are reflected with a lag. In other words, because changes in rental housing prices pass through to incumbent tenants with a lag, the TURKSTAT Actual Rent Index also captures current market developments in the rental housing market with a delay. Therefore, Türkiye has not had an official statistic that directly reflects contemporaneous changes in market rents.
To address this gap, the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT) has constructed the New Tenant Rent Index (NTRI), to be published on a monthly basis, by using the rent valuations included in appraisal reports obtained from banks for the compilation of the Residential Property Price Index (RPPI). The NTRI, which reflects current rent developments in the rental housing market, as well as the unit rents of appraised residential properties at the provincial level, started to be released on February 17, 2026.
As the data source, we use rent valuations obtained as part of the RPPI studies. These valuations are determined by appraisers and indicate the rent price at which the housing could be leased during the relevant period. The hedonic regression method is used in calculating the index to isolate the quality effect. Based on the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS), the regressions are estimated across a total of 19 strata, covering 13 NUTS level-2 regions and 6 NUTS level-1 regions. The indices derived from each stratum are weighted by the previous year's household counts and average housing values to calculate the overall NTRI for Türkiye.
Annual growth rates in the index began to accelerate in the final quarter of 2021 and peaked in the second half of 2022. Thereafter, housing rent growth has declined across all three major provinces, with a more pronounced slowdown in Istanbul. In the second quarter of 2023, Ankara began to diverge noticeably from the other two major provinces, with the gap widening further in the third quarter. We consider the strong inflow of migrants to the region in the aftermath of the February 2023 earthquake to be a key factor behind this divergence. With the tightening of monetary policy, annual growth rates followed a downtrend starting in the final quarter of 2023. As of January 2026, annual NTRI increases fell below 40% both nationwide and across the three major provinces (Chart 1).
As noted earlier, the NTRI is calculated based on rents to be faced by new tenants, so it reflects upward or downward changes in rents earlier than TURKSTAT’s Actual Rent Index. Therefore, by definition, the NTRI diverges from the rent series that is a sub-item of the CPI, as seen in examples from other countries. Indeed, the sharp rise in the NTRI at the end of 2021 took a long time to appear in TURKSTAT’s Actual Rent Index. We attribute this lag to pandemic restrictions that limited the mobility of incumbent tenants and the subsequent 25% cap on the rent increases they faced (Chart 2).
From the end of 2023, the NTRI’s growth rate started to slow markedly. This deceleration began to show up in TURKSTAT’s Actual Rent Index from the second quarter of 2024, yet the Actual Rent Index continued to be well above the NTRI. As of January 2026, the NTRI’s annual rate of increase declined to 34.2%, compared with 56,6% for TURKSTAT’s Actual Rent Index. This suggests that the decline in the growth rate of the Actual Rent Index, a sub-item of the CPI, will continue in the upcoming period.
With the NTRI, the CBRT also began publishing unit rents on a quarterly basis for appraised residential properties across Türkiye, as well as for provinces with sufficient data coverage. According to the findings, in the last quarter of 2025, the median rental value of a 100-square-meter residential property was calculated at approximately TRY 22,000 nationwide, compared to TRY 37,000 for Istanbul, TRY 21,000 for Ankara, and TRY 25,000 for Izmir (Chart 3).
As a result, the NTRI, released by the CBRT, serves as an important indicator not only for monitoring the dynamics of the housing rental market but also for providing leading signals regarding the inflation outlook for the rent item in the CPI. The identified lag highlights the difference between official rent inflation and current (market) rental developments. In this context, the fact that the rate of increase in actual rents has fallen to levels lower than suggested by the official index implies that the downward movement in the rent item, which has a significant weight in the CPI, will continue in the upcoming period. Actually, this is consistent with the CBRT's end-of-year rent inflation projection of 30%-36% as presented in the relevant box study within its most recent Inflation Report.
For these reasons, taking into account the methodological differences between the NTRI and TURKSTAT’s Actual Rent Index, these two indicators should not be treated as substitutes for each other, but as two complementary indices that allow for the joint assessment of both the current level and the possible direction of inflation. Furthermore, the publication of unit rents provides more concrete data on the level of residential rents and facilitates a better analysis of regional differences in residential rents.