Turkish Housing Market Grows with Foreign Buyers Presence
Turkey’s housing market grew 16.2% year-on-year in May, data showed on 14th June, due to a sharp downturn in the same month last year caused by the initial measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak. Home sales still marked the lowest level in a year, mostly due to a strict nationwide lockdown in May to curb the rise in daily cases. Some 59,166 residential properties were sold last month, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data. Month on-month sales were down 38.2%. Sales surged on high demand from foreign buyers, who purchased 1,776 homes in May, a 106.5% year-on-year increase, the data showed. The rise in borrowing costs from a summer low has continued to weigh in on mortgage sales, which fell 42.9% in May from a year earlier to 10,560 units. They accounted for 17.8% of the total sales in the month. Istanbul, the country’s largest city by population and one of its top tourist centers, took the largest share of house sales with 19.2%, or 11,356 units. The capital Ankara and the Aegean province of Izmir racked up 5,653 and 3,298 of total home sales, respectively. More than half of the residential properties, or 818 houses, bought by foreigners in the month were in Istanbul, followed by the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya with 341 and Ankara with 106. Iraqi citizens topped the list as they purchased 239 houses. They were followed by Iranians with 231 and Russians with 119 units. A total of 18,204 homes were sold for the first time, up 8% versus the same month last year. The first house sales had a 30.8% share of all purchases in the month. Residential properties sold from January through May were down 3.8% year-on-year to 418,079, the data showed. Cheap loans extended to ease economic fallout from the pandemic drove the 11.2% year-on-year rise in the overall house sales in the country in 2020, when nearly 1.5 million houses, an all-time high, changed hands. Mortgaged sales in the January-May period were down 54.3% to 75,290 units. Houses sold for the first time decreased by 8.2% to 127,786. Secondhand house sales fell 1.8% to 290,293. Foreign buyers purchased 15,740 houses in the five-month period, increasing 24.9% from a year ago. They had purchased around 40,812 houses throughout 2020, a 10.3% year-on-year decrease from 45,483 units in 2019. It still marked the second-highest annual figure ever.
Tags : INTERNATIONAL buyers housing market Foreign Grows Turkish Presence