By Muhammed Ali Gurtas
ANKARA (AA) - 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.