House sales in Türkiye surged by 17.6% year-over-year in May to over 130,000 units, thus reaching the highest monthly level so far this year, according to official data on Thursday.
The number of houses sold last month across the country stood at 130,025, the data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) revealed.
This compares to 110,588 units sold in May last year and 118,359 in April this year. The sales peaked last December when over 212,000 units were sold.
Istanbul took the lion's share with sales of 22,103 units in May, followed by the capital Ankara with 11,975 and the Aegean city of Izmir with 7,817, TurkStat data said.
Foreigners bought 1,771 houses in Türkiye last month, down 14.2% year-over-year, pointing to a continued trend in the fall of sales to foreign citizens in the recent period. In the January-May period, house sales to foreigners decreased by 13.7% compared to the same period of the previous year to 7,789.
House sales to foreigners had a 1.4% share of all house sales in May.
In May, the most house sales by nationality were made to citizens of Russia, Iran and Germany.
On the other hand, the provinces with the highest number of house sales to foreigners were Istanbul with 648 units, Antalya with 594 and Mersin with 145, respectively.
The data also revealed that mortgage house sales leaped 95.9% on an annual basis in May to 19,412 units, accounting for 14.9% of all house sales.
Sales of new houses rose 11.2% in May to reach 39,546 units, while second-hand sales grew 20.6% year-over-year to 90,479.
From January through May, house sales totaled 584,170 units, up 25.4% compared to the same period in 2024, the data showed.
