Home sales finally rebound in July after months of decline
ANKARA
Home sales rose by 16.7 percent in July from a year ago after declining in the previous five months, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) have shown.
The annual declines in home sales were as sharp as 44 percent in June and 36 percent in April.
Some 109,548 homes changed hands last month, up from around 84,000 residential properties sold in June, TÜİK said on Aug. 15.
Mortgaged sales, however, fell 24.1 percent from July 2022 to 19,146, making up a little more than 13 percent of all sales.
New home sales grew 10.3 percent, while the annual increase in existing home sales was 19.5 percent.
From January to July, home sales were down 17.7 percent from a year earlier to 675,327, with mortgaged sales shrinking 28.2 percent to 136,000.
TÜİK also reported a 28.9 percent year-on-year decline in sales to foreigners, who purchased a total of 2,801 homes in Türkiye last month. In the first seven months of 2023, home sales to foreign nationals plunged 43.9 percent to 22,076.
As was the case in the previous months, Russians were the largest buyers. They purchased 772 residential properties in July.
Iranians ranked second on the list of foreign homebuyers at 272, followed by Iraqis and Ukrainians at 204 and 146, respectively. Kazakhs also purchased 113 homes in Türkiye last month.
Some 19 percent of foreigners bought properties in Türkiye to obtain citizenship in the first half of 2023, showed a study by EVA Real Estate. This was 29.4 percent and 23 percent in the same periods of last year and in 2021, respectively.
Around 86 percent of those homes bought for citizenship were located in Istanbul, Antalya and the northwestern province of Edirne, according to the study.
