Housing market continues to contract

ANKARA

The contraction in the property market continued in November with house sales declining 34 percent last month from a year ago after falling 25.3 percent year-on-year in October.

Some 117,806 houses changed hands in November, slightly higher than 103,000 sales in the previous month, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) reported on Dec. 15.

Mortgage-financed sales, which accounted for 14 percent of all sales, plunged nearly 58 percent from November 2021 to 17,000 units.

Istanbul retained its position as the hottest market. Nearly, 19,700 houses were sold in Türkiye’s largest city in November, while Ankara accounted for 8 percent, or 9,400 units, of all sales in the country.

In the popular holiday destination Antalya, 7,900 houses were sold and 2,600 of those properties were bought by foreigners.

Antalya has seen an influx of Russians and Ukrainians, who fled the war and mostly headed to the province on the Mediterranean coast and Istanbul.

Locals complain that due to strong demand from foreigners, property prices and rents have skyrocketed in certain cities, including Istanbul and Antalya.

New dwelling sales dropped nearly 33 percent in November from the same month of 2021 to 37,400, while the sales of existing dwellings plunged 35 percent to a little more than 80,000 units.

In the first eleven months of 2022, a total of 1.28 million homes were sold, which translated to a 1 percent increase from the same period of last year.

Mortgage-financed sales were up 3.7 percent year-on-year to 259,000 in January-November. New dwelling sales fell by 0.7 percent on an annual basis, while existing home sales rose by 1.7 percent.

TÜİK data also showed that foreign nationals bought 6,000 houses in Türkiye last month, down more than 17 percent from a year ago. The share of sales to foreigners to total house sales was 5.2 percent.

Last month, foreigners purchased 1,733 houses in Istanbul and 567 units in the southern province of Mersin.

From January to November, more than 61,000 houses were sold to foreign nationals, marking a 20.4 percent increase from the same period of 2021.

Russians topped the list of foreign homebuyers. Russians increased their purchase of houses from 2,023 in October to 2,575 in November.

Iranians and Iraqis ranked second and third at 510, and 331 units, respectively. Some 277 houses were sold to Ukrainians, and German nationals bought 224 homes in Türkiye last month.