Property sales sharply rose in June as firms discounted home prices
ANKARA
Following a nearly five-month slowdown, house sales in Turkey rose significantly in June, mainly thanks to interest rate cuts in banks’ mortgage loans and discounts by real estate companies.
A total of 119,413 houses were sold in June, up by 22.4 percent compared to the same month last year, data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) showed on July 19.
The number of mortgaged property sales also rose 35.3 percent in June on a yearly basis, with 47,648 units being sold. Thus, the mortgaged home sales rose for the first time in the last nine months, according to TÜİK data.
House sales to foreigners also saw an increase of 7 percent year-on-year and reached to 2,060 units in the month.
Nearly 120,000 homes were sold in Turkey in May, marking a 2.7 percent increase over the same period last year, then marking the first yearly increase in sales in the last four months.
Three umbrella organizations of 41 Turkish housing and construction companies had recently announced homebuyers will be given a 20 percent discount on housing prices until the end of June.
Banks also slashed their interest rates for home loans one by one.
The number of residential properties sold in Turkey dropped 1.3 percent year-on-year to reach 646,032 in the first six months of 2018, TÜİK data also showed.
Some 298,877 houses were sold for the first time from January to June while the rest were second-hand sales, TÜİK reported.
The number of new mortgages slipped in the first half of this year — down by 18 percent to 210,805 — compared to the same period last year.
House sales with mortgages took a 31 percent share of all house sales in Turkey. Currently, the mortgage rate for 120 months is between 1.3 percent and 1.8 percent per month.
Sales to foreigners
The number of properties sold to foreigners surged by 23 percent during the same period. A total of 11,944 houses were sold to foreigners between January and June.
Istanbul, the country’s largest city by population, enjoyed the lion’s share of those sales to foreigners, with 33 percent (or 3,999 units).
Following Istanbul, the holiday resort city of Antalya came in second with 2,883 properties, while the northwestern province of Bursa ranked third with 812.
The figures showed that Iraqis again topped the list of buyers with 1,987 properties, followed by Saudis (1,087 units), Iranians (944), Russians (815) and Afghans (719).
