Nearly 370,000 houses sold in January-April

ANKARA

Nearly 370,000 homes have been sold in the January-April period of 2023, according to the latest data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).

Compared with the same period of last year, home sales pointed to an 18.6 percent decline.

Mortgage-financed sales showed a 19.7 percent decline in the first four months of the year from a year ago to around 81,000 units. Sales of existing houses declined by 19.9 percent on an annual basis, while new home sales were down 15.3 percent.

In April alone, nearly 85,700 homes were sold in Türkiye, which translated into a 36 percent decline from the same month of 2022.

Mortgage-financed sales, which accounted for 25.4 percent of all home sales in the month, stood at around 22,000, down 32 percent year-on-year.

New home sales dropped 39.3 percent, while the annual decline in existing home sales was 26 percent.

Other home sales, including all sales except for mortgage-financed sales, were down 36.8 percent to 63,900.

Istanbul was once again the hottest property market in April. Some 14,000 homes were sold in the country’s mega city with a population of more than 15 million people.

The capital Ankara’s share in house sales was 11.7 percent - or around 10,000 units, followed by İzmir, where nearly 5,000 houses - or 5.8 percent share in total - were sold last month.

Only 22 houses were sold in the northeastern province of Ardahan and southeastern province of Hakkari each.

The data from the statistics authority also showed that foreign nationals bought a total of 2,557 houses in Türkiye, which marked a 60.3 percent decline compared with April 2022.

Sales to foreigners made up 3 percent of all home sales in the country.

Antalya on the Mediterranean coast appeared to be the favorite location for foreign nationals to purchase a property. In April, foreign nationals bought 1,024 houses in the popular holiday destination.

In Istanbul they bought 792 houses and in the southern province of Mersin 186 houses.

Russians were top buyers, according to the TÜİK data. Russian nationals bought a total of 817 houses in Türkiye last month. Iraqis ranked second in the list with 377. Ukrainians constituted the third largest group of foreign homebuyers at 136. Iraqis and Kazakh nationals also bought 124 and 89 houses in the country in April.

From January to April, home sales to foreign nationals declined by 35 percent year-on-year to 13,483, TÜİK said.