One out of every 2 properties sold to foreigners in Turkey is realized from concept projects in Istanbul, hence the marketing efforts of real estate developers, who saw this demand, turned into the foreign customer market.
Since 2012, when the reciprocity law was legalized in the Turkish real estate sector, the interest of international foreign investors has gradually raised and has made very rapid growth in the last decade.
Despite the pandemic in 2020, which we left behind, it was recorded as one of the years in history with the highest sales to foreigners with over 40 thousand housing sales. While the number of properties sold in Turkey to foreigners raised rapidly with the enactment of the Reciprocity Law, the sales recorded in the first four months of this year approached 14 thousand housing units.
Housing sales to foreigners, made between January and April throughout Turkey, increased by 20 percent compared to the same period of last year. According to the statistics of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), Istanbul continues to stand out in housing sales data to foreigners. 7,033 of the sales to foreigners in the first four months were realized in Istanbul.
This year, the first preference of foreigners and the province where they purchase the most housing was Istanbul with a share of 50 percent. One out of every 2 properties sold to foreigners throughout Turkey was realized in Istanbul. There were foreigners who preferred to invest in real estate and live in Antalya city during the pandemic, which ranks second after Istanbul in housing sales to foreigners.
The fact that foreign investors not only seeing the quality and quantity of housing but also seeing the city they own as a “living space” raised the interest in Istanbul.
The most typical example of this is seen in the intense foreign interest in Istanbul, the only city in the world that is built on two continents and has a sea through it. Istanbul is a city that is located in the middle of East and West, which contains modern and traditional culture and offers both mystical and chaos for foreigners.
It is a city drawing the attention of foreign investors with its high investment value, geopolitical location, natural and cultural riches, transportation opportunities and newly built bridges, airports and advanced tourism, trade, entertainment life, event and congress tourism, as well as being a new financial center.
Istanbul continues to host new opportunities, offer added value to its investors and increase its value in the future with its studies and sector dynamics. At this point, housing projects in Istanbul continue to melt their housing stocks by turning their marketing and promotion activities into foreign real estate markets.
While foreign real estate investors provide financing support for under-construction housing projects, on the other hand, increasing construction costs and rising housing prices can be tolerated due to the rise in foreign exchange rates and the increase in foreign purchasing power.
Increasing housing prices along with rising construction costs do not decrease foreign customer demand, and it is expected that foreign interest in Istanbul will continue to increase rapidly in the coming period.