Turkey sees nearly 1.5M housing sales in 2021

A total of 1.49 million residential properties were sold in Turkey last year, the country's statistical authority said Friday.

This was slightly down by 0.5% from 2020, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data showed.

Istanbul had the highest share with 18.5% or 276,223 house sales in 2021, followed by Ankara with 144,104 and Izmir with 86,722.

Some 461,523 new houses were sold across the country, while the rest were secondhand sales.

The mortgaged housing sales totaled at 294,530 in 2021, down 49% from the previous year.

SALES TO FOREIGNERS RISE SIGNIFICANTLY

Housing sales to foreigners jumped by 43.5% year-on-year to hit 58,576 units in 2021, TurkStat data showed.

Istanbul, the country's largest city by population, enjoyed the lion's share of those sales to foreigners, with 26,469 units.

It was followed by the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya with 12,384 properties, and the capital Ankara with 3,672.

The data showed that Iranian citizens made up the largest group of foreign sales according to nationality, as they bought 10,056 houses in Turkey.

Iraqis followed them with 8,661 housing units, Russians with 5,379, Afghans with 2,762 and Germans with 2,358.

SALES FIGURES FOR DECEMBER

House sales in Turkey more than doubled in December on an annual basis -- up 113.7% -- reaching 226,503.

Some 7,841 residential property was sold to foreigners, a surge of 77.1% compared to the same month in 2020.