I thought this may be useful for someone.I was just going through my bills and trying to compare my UK house and my Turkish house. It’s a tough thing to do because the houses are quite different but here are the Turkish costs.
House is 3 bedroomed, three bathroomed 200m2 house with a pool. Costs are for a year and are converted to sterling at a rate of 2.45ytl to the pound, which is the current rate and quite high, normally the rate is around 2.60 ytl to the pound. Costs are based on full time living.
Electric £653.06
Gas £163.27
Mains Water £102.04
Drinking water £63.67
House and contents Insurance £450.00
Internet High Speed ADSL £372.24
Telephone £195.92
Satellite TV £195.92
Central heating and hot water is by LPG bottled gas, water is village water which is drinkable but we buy drinking water because of the minerals in the village water and we both have had kidney probs in the past.
Water cost includes filling the pool. Electricity is mains supply by Tedas and the pool pump runs constantly and the air cons are on a lot in the summer so I guess we use more electricity than most. The satellite system is Digiturk and isn’t the most expensive package but gives plenty of English language channels and films. Telephone is land line cost and pretty much all calls are international with me calling the UK probably three evenings a week and gabbing away for 30 minutes or so. Insurance for the Turkish house is via Intasure and it is a very high rebuild cost because the house is stone. It includes earthquake cover and emergency travel to deal with problems if I happen to be in the UK when something happens. If it was normal brick apparently it would be a lot lower. I’m sure that some people have much cheaper running costs but this is us living normally and not thinking about what we use too much and just getting on with in it in profligate western fashion 🙂
posted 29-03-2008