Annual decline in home sales slows in May: Data

The pace of year-on-year decline in house sales slowed from nearly 36 percent in April to 7.7 percent in May, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) have shown.

Home sales plunged more than 21 percent in March.

Last month a total of 113,276 houses were sold in Türkiye, with existing home sales declining 12.3 percent from May 2022. New home sales grew by 4.7 percent.

Mortgage-financed sales were down 6.3 percent year-on-year, accounting for 24.3 percent of all home sales.

Most homes changed hands in Istanbul at 18, 400 or 19.3 percent of total sales, followed by the capital Ankara at 11,000 or a 9.9 percent share. In Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast, which is a popular destination among Russians and Ukrainians, nearly 6,200 houses were sold in May.

TÜİK also reported that home sales to foreign nationals declined by 47 percent last month from a year ago to 3,167, which came on top of the 60 percent year-on-year decline in sales in April.

The share of sales to foreigners in total home sales was 2.8 percent.

Russians were top buyers at 991, followed by Iranians who bought 503 houses in Türkiye last month. Ukrainians and Germans ranked third and fourth in the list at 175 and 129.

Foreigners purchased 1,245 homes in Antalya, while Istanbul came second in sales to foreign nationals at 934. In the southern province of Mersin, 249 houses were sold to foreigners.

In the first five months of 2023, total home sales in Türkiye declined by more than 16 percent compared with the January-May period of last year to 482,000.

Sales to foreign nationals during this period plunged nearly 38 percent on an annual basis to 16,650, TÜİK said.