Turkey: Nearly 73,000 houses sold in January

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey saw 72,937house sales in January with a 24.8-percent annual fall, the country's statistical office announced Monday.

TurkStat said 31,048 newly-built houses were sold while the rest were second-hand sales last month.

"Istanbul had the highest share of house sales with 18.4 percent and 13,455 sold house," the institute said.

The capital Ankara and the Aegean province of Izmir followed Istanbul with 6,785 and 3,795 house sales, respectively.

Official figures showed that mortgaged house sales across the country was 6,537, going down 77.2 percent on a yearly basis.

TurkStat noted that sales with mortgage had a 9 percent share of all house sales in January.

Last year, over 1.37 million property sales were recorded in Turkey, while around 650,000 of them were newly-built houses.