Home prices rise 7 pct in November

ISTANBUL

The residential price index increased by 7.2 percent in November 2019 from the same month of the previous year, data from the Central Bank showed on Jan. 17.

On a monthly basis house prices across Turkey rose by 1.09 percent in the month versus the 0.78 percent increase recorded in October 2018.

The price index for new dwellings exhibited a 10.4 percent increase on an annual basis in November while the index for existing units increased 7 percent from a year earlier.

In Istanbul, the country’s most populous city, house prices rose by 1.3 percent rise in November last year from a year earlier while the property market in the capital Ankara saw an annual increase of 6.5 percent in house prices. In İzmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, prices were up 7.5 percent.

A total of 1.35 million housing units were sold in Turkey last year, the country’s statistics institute (TÜİK) reported earlier this week.
House sales declined by 1.9 percent in 2019 compared with 2018. Mortgage-financed sales increased by 20.1 percent last year to 332,508 units.

In December alone, housing sales soared nearly 48 percent on an annual basis to reach some 202,000 units while property sales to foreign nationals jumped 16 percent to 5,300 units.

In the month, mortgage-financed property sales skyrocketed, rising more than 603 percent on an annual basis to 50,278 units.

"Housing sales exceeded the 200,000 mark last December for the first time,” Ahmet Erkurtoğlu, the deputy head of the Contractors’ Association of Istanbul’s Anatolian Side, told Anadolu Agency.

Lower interest rates for housing loans and deposits affected housing sales positively, he added.

“We can sell around 1.2-1.3 million housing units in 2020 again,” he predicted.