Turkey: Nearly 85,000 houses sold in April

ANKARA

Turkey saw 84,403 house sales in April with an 18.1% annual decline, the country's statistical office reported Thursday.

"Istanbul had the highest share of house sales with 18.3% and 15,481 houses sold," TurkStat said.

The capital Ankara and the Aegean province of Izmir followed Istanbul with 7,519 and 4,797 house sales, respectively.

Official figures revealed that 33,443 houses across the country were sold for the first time while the rest were second-hand sales last month.

TurkStat said mortgaged house sales was 10,793 in April, falling 61.3% on a yearly basis.

The institute noted that sales with a mortgage had a 12.8% share of all house sales over the same period.

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 up 82.1%

Property sales to foreigners totaled at 3,720 units in April, climbing 82.1% year-on-year.

TurkStat said Istanbul was the most preferred city with 1,839 sales -- followed by the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya with 676 sales.

Last month, Iraqis purchased the most houses with a total of 533 properties.

Iraq was followed by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and Russia, the institute said.

In 2018, house sales to foreigners posted an annual hike of 78.4%, reaching 39,663 units.

TurkStat will release its next property sales report on June 17.