Turkey: Over 127,000 houses sold in September

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey recorded over 127,000 house sales in September, falling 9.2 percent on a yearly basis, the country's statistical office announced Friday.

TurkStat reported that nearly 67,000 newly-built houses were sold while the rest were second-hand sales last month.

Istanbul, Turkey's largest city by population, saw the highest number of property sales with 20,216 units, accounting for some 15.9 percent of overall sales in September.

The capital Ankara and the Aegean province of Izmir followed Istanbul with 11,368 and 6,207 house sales, respectively.

"The mortgaged house sales throughout Turkey was 11,330 -- a drop of 72 percent compared to the same month of the previous year," the institute said.

"House sales with a mortgage had an 8.9 percent share of all house sales in Turkey," TurkStat said.

From January to September, nearly 750,000 house sales were recorded in Turkey, as the overall residential property sales amounted to 1.4 million in 2017.

- Sales to foreigners

In September, property sales to foreigners surged by 151.1 percent year-on-year, reaching 5,615 units.

Istanbul was the most preferred city with 1,799 sales and it was followed by the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya with 1,038 sales.

Official figures showed that most house sales were made to Iraqi citizens as they bought 1,351 properties last month.

"The followers of Iraq were Iran with 538 house sales, Kuwait with 360 house sales, Saudi Arabia with 312 house sales and Germany with 299 house sales," TurkStat said.

Since the beginning of this year, foreigners purchased more than 24,000 houses in Turkey, while over 22,000 properties were sold last year.

TurkStat will release its next property sales report -- for October -- on Wednesday, November 21.