Nearly 1.5 million residential houses sold in Turkey last year

ANKARA

A total of 1.49 million residential properties were sold in Turkey last year, according to data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) on Jan. 14.

“Istanbul had the highest share with 18.5 percent and 276,223 house sales. The followers of Istanbul were Ankara with 144,104 house sales and İzmir with 86,722 house sales,” said TÜİK.

The overall figure was was down by 0.5 percent from 2020, when the coronavirus hit the economy starting from the second quarter of the year.

Some 461,523 new houses were sold across the country, while the rest were secondhand sales.

The mortgaged housing sales totaled at 294,530 in 2021, down 49 percent from the previous year.

Housing sales to foreigners jumped by 43.5 percent on an annual basis to reach 58,576 units in 2021.
Istanbul took the lion’s share of those sales to foreigners with 26,469 units.

It was followed by the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya with 12,384 properties, and the capital Ankara with 3,672.
The data showed that Iranian citizens made up the largest group of foreign sales according to nationality, as they bought 10,056 houses in Turkey.

Iraqis followed them with 8,661 housing units, Russians with 5,379, Afghans with 2,762 and Germans with 2,358.
In December 2021, house sales in Turkey increased by up 113.7 percent on an annual basis to reach 226,503 units.
In the same month, some 7,841 residential properties were sold to foreigners, up by 77.1 percent year on year.