Foreigners losing appetite for buying real estate in Türkiye

ISTANBUL

Foreigners’ transactions in the Turkish real estate market have shown a steep decline in the first quarter of 2024 owing largely to rising prices, according to a new report.

Sales to foreign nationals plunged 71 percent annually by square meter, while the number of transactions fell 45 percent in the January-March period from a year ago, according to the report by EVA Real Estate Appraisal Consultancy.

In the first quarter of 20204, foreigners bought real estate of 471,000 square meters, down from 1.6 million square meters from a year earlier.

The number of transactions in the real estate market declined from 12,756 to only 7,000, according to data EVA collected from the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre.

Separate data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) showed that from January to March, foreigners purchased a total of 5,865 homes in Türkiye, marking a steep 48 percent year-on-year decline.

Foreigners paid on average $170,719 for homes they bought in Türkiye, down from $268,368 in the previous quarter, according to the Real Estate Service Exporters’ Association (GİGDER).

Some 48 percent of GİGDER members expect home sales to foreigners to decline in the next three months, while 23.8 percent think otherwise.

Russians, Iranians, Iraqis, Ukrainians, Germans and Kazakhs were the most active foreign nationals in real estate transactions. Azeris, Afghans, Americans and Chinese were other big buyers of Turkish properties.

Russians bought 1,532 real estate properties (10,497 square meters), Iranians purchased 704 properties (15,935 square meters), Iraqis bought 364 properties (22,473 square meters) and Chinese nationals purchased 168 properties (1,015 square meters) in the first quarter of 2024.

People from the Gulf countries also reduced their purchases of Turkish real estate properties in the first quarter of 2024. From January to Mach, they bought real estate with a total of 99,429 square meters of area, down 74 percent from the same period of 2023. Their share in total foreign transactions fell from 23 percent to 21 percent.

Istanbul was foreign buyers’ favorite real estate market, followed by the northwestern province of Bursa and the southern province of Mersin. The tourist hotspot Antalya, the capital Ankara and the western province of İzmir were other favorite places where foreign nationals bought properties.

Iranians were the most active buyers in the Istanbul real estate market in the first three months of 2024. Russians and Iraqis came second and third, respectively. Chinese, Palestinians, Afghans and Azeris were other big buyers.

Foreigners bought 60,600 square meters of real estate in the megacity, down 67 percent from a year earlier, while home sales to foreign nationals nosedived 42 percent to 2,612 units.