Residential property sales in Türkiye maintained an upward trend in January, after having left behind a buoyant year despite strict monetary tightening and falling purchases by foreigners.
House sales soared 39.7% year-over-year last month to 112,173 units, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) on Friday. The figure still marked the lowest since June last year and almost halved from 211,637 units in December.
Sales rebounded in 2024 to grow by 20.6% to about 1.48 million, returning to levels last seen in 2022.
Mortgaged sales jumped 182.8% on an annual basis in January to 16,726, accounting for 14.9% of all house sales, the data showed.
They had dropped 10.8% in 2024 as a whole as a strict policy campaign kept borrowing costs high, before the central bank launched an easing cycle in December, reversing an 18-month tightening drive.
Between mid-2023 and March 2024, the bank raised its benchmark policy rate by 4,150 basis points to curb high inflation. Rate hikes typically lift borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans and credit cards.
The central bank has delivered cuts of 250 basis points each in December and January to 45% and is expected to be lowered to 30% by the end of the year.
New house sales rose by 29.8% to reach 32,785 in January, while second-hand sales grew 44.2% year-over-year to 79,388, the TurkStat data showed.
The provinces with the highest number of sales last month were Istanbul with 18,912, the capital Ankara with 10,158 and the Aegean province of Izmir with 6,634.
Sales to foreigners fell 24.9% year-over-year in January, totaling 1,547. They had tumbled 32.1% in the whole of 2024.
Istanbul saw the highest number of sales to foreign buyers with 611, followed by the southwestern resort city of Antalya with 469, and the southern province of Mersin with 118.
Russians topped the list of foreign buyers with 248 houses purchased in January ahead of 162 buyers from Iran and 103 from Iraq.
