House sales rebounded in 2024 to grow by 20.6% from a year ago, official data showed on Tuesday, returning to levels last seen in 2022 despite strict monetary tightening and falling purchases by foreigners.
About 1.48 million residential properties exchanged hands last year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said. That compared to 1.2 million houses sold in 2023, a nine-year low, and almost 1.49 million units sold in 2022.
In December alone, the figure rose by 53.4% compared to the same month last year, with a total of 212,637 units sold, the TurkStat said.
That month, the central bank cut its key interest rate by 250 basis points to 47.5%, 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 TurkStat data showed that mortgaged sales surged 285.3% in December from a year earlier, but they dropped 10.8% in 2024 as a whole, falling to 158,486 units and making up 10.7% of all sales in the year.
The highest annual sales on record were 1.5 million units, achieved amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Sales to foreigners bounced back in December to grow by 17.2% year-over-year to 2,418 units they tumbled 32.1% in the whole of 2024 to 23.781 units, according to the data.
Russians again topped the list of foreign buyers with 4,867 houses purchased last year, ahead of 2,166 buyers from Iran and 1,631 from Ukraine.
Hakan Şişik, head of the Anatolian Side Construction Contractors Association (AYIDER), Türkiye has returned to its 2022 figures.
“Even we were caught off guard by the peak in December sales,” Şişik said in a statement, emphasizing that targeted sales of over 1.35 million units for the year had been surpassed.
He attributed the uptick to increased interest in housing projects with special financing campaigns and flexible payment terms offered by developers.
Şişik projected that sales will continue to rise, supported by monetary policy shifts.
As the central bank continues to cut borrowing costs, he added, investors may turn their focus back to real estate this year due to the decline in interest rates.
