Many people who live abroad and own a home in Turkey say the same thing: “I want the work done, but I can’t be there to watch over it.” That is a fair reservation. For a renovation run remotely to work, three things have to be in writing: who decides, when the reports arrive, and on what condition money goes out.
1. Power of attorney: keep it narrow
Don’t give a “general power of attorney”. What you need is a specific power of attorney that lists each task one by one: licence and permit applications, utility account procedures, correspondence with the building management. Authority to sell, mortgage, transfer title or take out a loan must absolutely not be in it.
Who you give the power of attorney to matters too. The person spending the money and the person supervising the work should not be the same. On our own projects we take a power of attorney only for permits and utility accounts; the payments go out of your own account.
2. Money: let it leave your own account
The safest arrangement is this: material and subcontractor payments are made with your approval, from your own bank account. That way no sum passes through anywhere you can’t see. The second-best option is to open a single project account and see the statement for every movement.
The arrangement to avoid: transferring a lump-sum advance into someone’s account and leaving the spending to them. Even without bad faith, there is no way left to track it.
3. Reporting: dated and always in the same format
Good reporting isn’t elaborate, it’s repeatable. The pattern we follow is this:
- Weekly report with photos — photographs of the same rooms from the same angles, what was done that week, what will be done next week, decisions pending.
- A video tour every two weeks — by phone, in one take, with commentary. What a photograph can hide, a video can’t.
- A live call at the closing-up points — before a wall is closed, before a floor is closed, before the cabinets go in. Those three moments are the ones that are expensive to reopen later.
- Spending table — budget, spent, remaining; one page at the end of every report.
4. Approval: what you decide
The most common problem on projects run remotely is that the “small” decisions get made on your behalf. Setting a threshold at the outset ends that: every expense above a given amount and every change with an aesthetic effect is made with your written approval, and anything below it is reported to you. You set the threshold.
5. Handover: how to accept it from a distance
If you can’t come to the property for the handover, we draw up the snag list over a video tour and you add to the list yourself. No final payment is made until the list is closed. If you like, you can ask someone you trust (a relative, a neighbour) to come for the final check — we recommend it too; a second pair of eyes is in everyone’s interest.
Careful: fraud checklist
- Check the current record of your title deed once a year through e-Devlet.
- Confirm the scope of the power of attorney you gave with the notary, and revoke it when the work is done.
- Never make a payment into a personal account without a stated reason.
- Don’t accept material without an invoice and a delivery note.
- Ask the companies working on site for their tax certificate and their insurance records.
Would you like our remote management protocol? We’ll e-mail you the document that sets out the reporting pattern, the approval thresholds and the payment flow. Request it here.