Property prices continue to increase

ANKARA

The Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) increased monthly by 5.4 percent in October, while it recorded an annual increase of 188 percent in nominal terms and 56.3 percent in real terms, according to data released by the Turkish Central Bank yesterday.

The price index for new dwellings exhibited a 177.4 percent increase on an annual basis in the month and the index for existing units rose by 190 percent from a year earlier.

The unit price of a dwelling on averate was 16,563 Turkish Lira/square meters in Türkiye in May.

In Istanbul, the country’s most populous city, house prices increased more than 204 percent from a year earlier, with the price of new dwellings rising 198 percent.

The rise in residential property prices in Ankara was above 194 percent, while in İzmir, Turkey’s third largest city, prices were up 186 percent year on year.

Most experts link the decline in the house sales to the skyrocketing property prices.

The data from the Turkish Statiscial Institute this week showed that 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.

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