Dragos Kartal Villa

On the Anatolian side of Istanbul, up on the Dragos ridge above Kartal, the Sea of Marmara opens in front of you and the city runs away along the shoreline. This four-storey villa sits on a 740 m² plot, takes up only 120 m² at ground level and leaves the remaining 620 m² to a landscaped garden. It is newly built and completely finished — the floors are laid, the kitchen is in, the lift is running — so it is a house you can take the keys to and move into the same day.

Inside, 500 m² of net living space unfolds across 7 rooms and 2 salons, with 4 bathrooms and a separate WC. The basement holds a 60 m² hobby room that becomes a studio, a gym or a cinema just as easily. Terraces and balconies on the upper floors turn toward the water, and the 40 m² pool in the garden is heated — which is what turns it from a summer pool into a twelve-month one. A lift reaches every floor, and parking is inside the grounds.

The engineering behind all of this was handled with the same care. The structure is C35 reinforced concrete founded on rock, and all four sides of the plot are held by retaining concrete walls. Heating comes from a Rehau underfloor system and cooling from a Daikin Mini-VRF, with an independent unit in every room. The boiler and water pumps are Buderus, and the roof was built ready for solar. A smart home system brings the shutters, the heating and cooling and the lighting scenes together in one place.

The materials keep to the same standard. Hungarian-cut laminated oak parquet on the floors, granite on the stairs, Kütahya Seramik through the wet areas and an electric fireplace in the main salon. The kitchen, the bathroom cabinetry, the cloakroom and the entrance console are custom pieces by Raykonsept; the built-in appliances are Siemens and the windows are Volkswagen systems. In the bathrooms you will find Bocchi sanitaryware, an Artemis shower enclosure and Duravit taps. New, empty and ready to live in, the villa also sits well above the $400,000 threshold for Turkish Citizenship by Investment. Some frames in the gallery are visualisations — the pool shown filled and the rooms furnished; the house is handed over unfurnished.