ANKARA-Nearly 120,000 houses were sold in Turkey in May, marking a 2.7 percent increase over the same period last year, the country’s statistics agency announced Wednesday.Some 55,500 houses were sold for the first time while the rest were second-hand sales — TurkStat reported.
“For the house sales of May 2018, Istanbul had the highest share of house sales with 16.8 percent and 20,061 sold house,” the agency said in a press statement released in English.Turkey’s largest city was followed by the capital Ankara and the Aegean province of Izmir with 11,919 units (10 percent of all sales) and 7,028 units (5.9 percent of all sales), respectively.
“House sales with a mortgage had a 30.8 percent share of all house sales in Turkey,” it added.
Last year, the overall residential property sales amounted to 1.4 million in Turkey with a 5.1 percent annual hike over 2016.
Sales to foreigners
Official data showed that property sales to foreigners in May rose by 36.1 percent year-on-year, reaching 2,415 units.
Istanbul led with 854 sales, followed by Antalya, Bursa, Yalova, and Ankara.
Among foreigners, most sales were made to Iraqi nationals with 407 houses, TurkStat said.
“The followers of Iraq were Iran with 217 house sales, Saudi Arabia with 206 house sales, Russia with 165 house sales and Afghanistan with 131 house sales.”
Last year, foreigners purchased over 22,000 properties in Turkey. Iraqis were again at the top spot with 3,805 house purchases, followed by Saudi nationals (3,345), Kuwaitis (1,691), Russians (1,331), and Afghans (1,078).
TurkStat will release its next property sales report — for June — on Thursday, July 19, 2018.
Source; Anadolu Agency