More than 80,000 houses sold in May
ANKARA
Turkey saw 82,252 house sales in May with a 31.3 percent annual decline, the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) reported on June 17.
“Istanbul had the highest share of house sales with 19.3 percent and 15,895 houses sold,” TÜİK said.
The capital Ankara and the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya followed Istanbul with 8,240 and 5,091 house sales, respectively.
The institute noted that 33,765 houses across the country were sold for the first time while the rest were second-hand sales last month.
The mortgage-financed house sales amounted to 5,231 - going down 85.8 percent year-on-year - with a 6.4 shared share of all sales in May.
Meanwhile, state-owned lender Ziraat yesterday announced that it has launched inflation-indexed housing loans to boost demand.
“We want to unleash demand from people who are expecting inflation to decline in the period ahead and that is why delay their possible purchases of properties,” Hüseyin Aydın, general manager of Ziraat, told Anadolu Agency.
The loans to be extended by the bank will have a maturity up to 120 months, and the credit will amount to the 80 percent of the value of the house.
Aydın added that two other state banks, namely Vakıfbank and Halkbank, may also announce similar schemes.
Ziraat, Turkey’s largest bank by asset, had an 18-percent share in the country’s loan market as of March.
Data from the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) showed that housing loans volume in Turkey stood at 189 billion Turkish Liras (around $32 billion) at the end of 2018, down from 191 billion liras at end of 2017.
Local banks provided 164 billion liras worth of housing loans in 2016.
Last year, over 1.37 million property sales were recorded in Turkey while around 650,000 of them were newly-built houses.
Sales to foreigners
TÜİK data also revealed that a total of 3,925 properties were sold to foreigners in May, a 62.5 percent increase from a year ago.
“Istanbul took the lead in property sales to foreign nationals with 1,734 sold,” the institute said, adding that Antalya and Ankara followed the metropolis with 850 and 216 house sales, respectively.
In May, the most house sales were made to Iraqi citizens with 595 properties sold.
The institute noted that Iraq was followed by Iran, Russia, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
In 2018, house sales to foreigners posted an annual hike of 78.4 percent, reaching a total of 39,663 units.
Foreigners who buy real estate worth $250,000 acquire the right of lifetime citizenship
