The number of houses sold to foreigners in Turkey decreased 14.4 percent in April, compared to the same month of the previous year, according to figures released by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat).
A total of 1,581 houses, 540 of them in İstanbul, were sold to foreigners in April 2016. Antalya followed İstanbul with 360 houses, while 116 houses were sold in Bursa. The remaining houses were sold in Yalova, Trabzon and Sakarya.
Most of the foreign sales were made to Iraqi citizens with 276 houses from Turkey in April 2016. The followers of Iraq were Kuwait with 172 house sales, Saudi Arabia with 165 house sales, Afghanistan with 115 house sales and Russia with 96 house sales.
In general, house sales in Turkey also decreased by 10.9 percent in April, compared to the same month of the previous year. A total of 106,348 houses were sold in Turkey, with 19,537 houses – 18.4 percent of the total – being sold in İstanbul. While 11,843 houses were sold in the Ankara capital, 6,568 houses were sold in İzmir.
Provinces where fewest houses were sold were Ardahan, Hakkari and Şırnak – southeastern Turkey – with 7, 13 and 18 houses being sold primarily due to Turkey’s terror problem.
Data released by TurkStat also showed that number of houses sold for the first time decreased 10.8 percent to 46,908 in April 2016, compared to April 2015. A total of 8,922 houses were sold for the first time in İstanbul, which composes the 19 percent of all the houses sold for the first time. Ankara and İzmir followed İstanbul in the number of houses sold for the first time with 4,625 and 2,558 houses respectively.