House sales increase upon lower loan rates

ANKARA

Of the houses sold, 1,369 were to foreigners, a rise of 28 percent compared with 1,071 in the same month of 2014 including 466 in Istanbul. HÜRRİYET photo

Property sales increased by 15 percent from the same month of the previous year with the help of a decrease in the interest rates on housing loans, said the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) in a statement on March 24.

The surge came after a drop of 1.7 percent in January.

A total of 9021 houses were sold in February, pushing the number of houses sold in the first two months of this year to 181,188, according to the TÜİK data.

“The lower interest rates in housing loans at around 0.85-0.9 have created a positive mood in the sector… There was an expectation among potential house buyer to see more cuts in rates last year and they preferred to delay their buying. Such expectations have been much weaker as of now and we see an increase in housing sales,” TSKB Real Estate Evaluation Manager Makbule Yönel Maya told Reuters.

“We, however, now see another delaying tendency in consumers due to the severe fluctuations in the forex markets. Consumers want to retain their cash. We therefore expect a slow-down in the house sales in the coming months, until the summer months,” she said.

Mortgaged house sales, however, rose to 36,952 units, having a 38.9 percent share in total house sales in Turkey in February and a 53.6 percent of increase from the same month of the previous year.

Of the houses sold, 1,369 were to foreigners, an increase of 28 percent compared with 1,071 in the same month of last year, including 466 houses in Istanbul, 356 in the southern province of Antalya, 106 in Bursa and 77 in the northwestern province of Yalova.