Turkey’s official property sales data tells a more nuanced story in 2026 than the headline national totals suggest: overall sales volume remains healthy, but foreign buyer demand specifically has been cooling for several consecutive quarters. This guide breaks down the latest published statistics from Turkey’s Statistical Institute (TÜİK) on both national and foreign property sales, who is still buying, where, and what the trend actually means for investors weighing the Turkish market right now.
National Sales Volume Remains Strong
Nationwide residential property sales have continued growing on an annual basis through 2026. April 2026 alone recorded 126,808 units sold, up 2.6% year-on-year, continuing the broader pattern of sustained transaction volume covered in our Turkish property trends guide, which found more than 834,000 homes sold nationwide between January and July 2026, up 24% year-on-year. Istanbul continues to account for the largest single share of national sales, followed by Ankara and Izmir, a pattern that has held consistent for several years.
Mortgage-Financed Sales Are Surging
One of the more significant shifts in the national data through 2026 has been a sharp rebound in mortgage-financed purchases, which had been suppressed for years by elevated interest rates. Mortgaged home sales jumped 72.1% year-on-year to 25,993 units in June 2026 alone, representing 20% of all transactions that month, while April 2026 saw mortgage-financed sales rise 40.5% to 25,771 units (20.3% of total sales). Across the first six months of 2026, mortgage-financed sales reached 142,794 units, up 32.2% on the same period a year earlier. This is a meaningful change from the instalment-plan-dominated financing pattern described in our property trends guide, and suggests financing conditions have started easing enough to bring bank-mortgage buyers back into the market at scale, alongside the developer instalment plans that had become the dominant financing route during the higher-rate period.
New-Build vs Resale: The National Split Confirms the Istanbul Pattern
National data mirrors the roughly 70/30 secondary-to-new-build split observed specifically in Istanbul. In June 2026, second-hand home sales rose 12.5% to 86,573 units while new-build sales climbed 23.1% to 43,406 units, putting the national split at approximately 67% resale to 33% new-build. April 2026 showed an almost identical pattern: second-hand sales of 86,502 units (68.2% of the total) against 40,306 new-build sales (31.8%), with new-build sales growing faster (+9.6% year-on-year) than second-hand sales (-0.3%). The consistency between the Istanbul-specific figures and this national data confirms that the resale-dominated market structure is a nationwide pattern, not an Istanbul-specific anomaly, while also showing new-build sales growing modestly faster than resale — a small but real shift that may reflect the mortgage-financing rebound making new-build purchases, which typically carry a higher price premium, more accessible again.
Foreign Buyer Sales Are Cooling, Not Collapsing
The more interesting story is on the foreign-buyer side specifically. Between January and June 2026, foreign buyers purchased 9,083 properties nationwide, a decline of 9.2% compared with the same period in 2025. This continues a multi-year cooling trend in foreign transaction volume that has been visible since the sharp declines first recorded in 2024, though the pace of decline has moderated considerably — a roughly 9% year-on-year drop is a meaningfully softer trend than the 40%-plus annual declines recorded at the peak of the earlier slowdown.
Quarterly data confirms the same pattern: Q1 2026 foreign sales fell 14.9% year-on-year to 4,165 properties, while June 2026 alone still saw meaningful activity, with Russian citizens purchasing 381 properties, the largest single-nationality total of the month.
Who Is Still Buying: Foreign Buyer Nationalities
Russian citizens remain, by a clear margin, the largest group of foreign property buyers in Turkey, a position they have held consistently for several years. In Q1 2026, Russian buyers completed 229 transactions, followed by Iranian buyers (130) and German buyers (84), with Iraqi and Ukrainian buyers also placing in the top five. By June 2026, Ukrainian and Iranian buyers had each purchased 170 properties, tying for second place behind Russia’s 381 transactions that month. Both Russian and Iranian buyer volumes are themselves declining year-on-year — Russian purchases down roughly 10% and Iranian purchases down roughly 15% over the same period the year before — indicating the cooling trend is broad-based across Turkey’s top source markets rather than concentrated in any single nationality.
Beyond the Top Five: The Rest of Turkey’s Foreign Buyer Pool
While Russia, Iran, Germany, Iraq, and Ukraine consistently occupy the top five spots, Turkey’s foreign buyer base extends well beyond these nationalities. Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and China have all featured in the broader top-ten rankings in recent years, reflecting a genuinely international buyer pool rather than dependence on any single source market. This diversification is a structural strength for the market: even as any one nationality’s purchasing volume rises or falls with its own domestic economic and geopolitical conditions, the presence of multiple, largely independent buyer pools means Turkey’s overall foreign-buyer demand is less exposed to a shock in any single source country than it would be with a more concentrated buyer base.
Where Foreign Buyers Are Purchasing
Istanbul, Antalya, and Mersin remain the three leading provinces for foreign property purchases, in that order, a ranking that has held steady across recent years. On a full-year 2025 basis, Istanbul recorded 7,989 foreign purchases, Antalya 7,118, and Mersin 1,800 — illustrating just how concentrated foreign demand is in these three provinces relative to the rest of the country. On a monthly basis, February 2026 alone saw 721 foreign purchases in Istanbul, 390 in Antalya, and 79 in Mersin, roughly tracking the same relative proportions as the full-year figures.
Why Istanbul, Antalya, and Mersin Dominate Foreign Purchases
The concentration of foreign buying in these three provinces reflects three different value propositions. Istanbul offers scale, liquidity, and the broadest range of property types and price points, along with direct international flight connectivity that makes it a natural entry point for first-time foreign buyers in Turkey. Antalya has built its position on lifestyle and tourism: a well-established international airport, a mature short-term rental market catering to European holidaymakers, and a large existing expatriate community that makes settling in easier for new arrivals. Mersin, a more recent addition to the top tier, has grown on the back of relative affordability compared with Istanbul and Antalya, plus proximity to Northern Cyprus, making it attractive to buyers who want a lower entry price while remaining within a similar coastal Mediterranean lifestyle bracket. Together these three provinces illustrate that foreign buyers in Turkey are not a single homogeneous group chasing one strategy, but several distinct buyer profiles — urban investors, lifestyle/rental buyers, and value-focused buyers — each gravitating to the province that best fits their specific goal.
Why Foreign Demand Has Been Cooling
Several factors help explain the multi-year moderation in foreign transaction volume, distinct from the continued strength in the domestic market covered in our broader trends guide. Turkish lira-denominated prices have risen substantially in recent years even as the lira itself has depreciated, meaning the effective USD or EUR cost of Turkish property has moved less dramatically than lira figures alone suggest, somewhat reducing the currency-driven bargain appeal that fuelled earlier surges in foreign buying. Geopolitical and economic conditions in key source markets — particularly Russia and Iran — have also shifted since the initial post-2022 surge in buyer interest from those countries. And competing markets, including some of the other destinations Uinvest Group operates in such as Northern Cyprus, Oman, and the UAE, have continued actively marketing to the same buyer pool, providing alternative options that did not exist, or were less visible, during Turkey’s earlier peak in foreign demand.
Snapshot: Key 2026 Figures at a Glance
| Metric | Figure | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| National sales, April 2026 | 126,808 units | +2.6% YoY |
| Foreign sales, H1 2026 | 9,083 units | -9.2% YoY |
| Foreign sales, Q1 2026 | 4,165 units | -14.9% YoY |
| Mortgage-financed sales, H1 2026 | 142,794 units | +32.2% YoY |
| Mortgage share of transactions, June 2026 | ~20% | Up from prior years |
| New-build share, national | ~32% | Growing modestly |
| Top foreign buyer nationality | Russia | 381 units in June alone |
| Top foreign buyer province | Istanbul | 7,989 units in 2025 |
How to Read Turkish Real Estate Statistics Correctly
TÜİK (the Turkish Statistical Institute) publishes monthly sales data broken down by province, buyer nationality, and financing method, and this is the authoritative source behind virtually every market report, including this one. A few things are worth keeping in mind when interpreting these figures. First, month-to-month figures can be volatile and are best read against the same month a year earlier (year-on-year) rather than against the previous month, since Turkish property sales carry meaningful seasonal patterns. Second, foreign-buyer statistics capture only transactions where the buyer is a non-Turkish national purchasing directly — they do not capture purchases made through a Turkish company structure, which some foreign investors use for tax or legal reasons, meaning true foreign-linked investment activity may be modestly understated in the headline foreign-buyer figures. Third, national averages can obscure large regional and even district-level variation, which is why this guide breaks figures down by province and nationality rather than relying on national totals alone.
Historical Context: How Today’s Numbers Compare
Turkey’s foreign property market went through a pronounced boom-and-cooling cycle over the past several years. Foreign sales surged sharply in 2022 as buyers, particularly from Russia, sought both currency diversification and a comparatively fast citizenship-by-investment route following geopolitical events that year. That surge peaked and then reversed sharply through 2023 and 2024, with year-on-year declines exceeding 40% in some months during the sharpest phase of the correction. The 9.2% year-on-year decline recorded for H1 2026 represents a significant moderation of that earlier decline rate, suggesting the foreign-buyer segment may be approaching a more sustainable, structurally lower baseline rather than continuing an open-ended slide. Domestic demand, by contrast, never experienced the same boom-bust pattern, growing more steadily throughout the same period and now substantially outweighing foreign buying as a share of total transactions.
What This Means for Investors
A cooling foreign-buyer segment alongside continued strong domestic transaction volume is not necessarily a negative signal for real estate investors — it can mean less competition from other foreign buyers for the same listings, and continued strong underlying demand from the much larger domestic buyer pool supporting resale liquidity. For investors specifically pursuing Turkey’s $400,000 citizenship-by-investment route, the underlying property market fundamentals — sustained domestic transaction volume, continued (if more moderate) foreign interest concentrated in Istanbul, Antalya, and Mersin, and structurally constrained new-build supply covered in our property trends guide — remain intact even as headline foreign-buyer volume has moderated from its earlier peak.
Tracking These Statistics Going Forward
TÜİK publishes updated sales data monthly, typically with a several-week lag, meaning the specific figures in this guide will themselves become dated over time even as the underlying structural patterns — resale-dominated market structure, Istanbul/Antalya/Mersin’s dominance in foreign sales, Russia’s consistent lead among foreign buyer nationalities — tend to persist for longer. Investors making a purchase decision based on current statistics should always check the most recent published month directly rather than relying on any single article, including this one, as a permanently current source, and should weigh short-term monthly volatility against the more durable year-on-year and multi-year trends discussed throughout this guide.
How Uinvest Group Can Help
Uinvest Group tracks TÜİK’s official sales data alongside our own transaction experience across Istanbul, Antalya, and other key Turkish markets, and can help identify where current buyer demand — both foreign and domestic — is concentrated by district and property type, whether the goal is rental yield, capital appreciation, or a qualifying purchase for citizenship or residency.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many properties were sold in Turkey in the most recent reporting month?
April 2026 recorded 126,808 units sold nationwide, up 2.6% year-on-year, continuing a broader pattern of sustained national transaction volume through 2026.
Is foreign demand for Turkish property declining?
Yes, but moderately rather than sharply. Foreign buyers purchased 9,083 properties between January and June 2026, down 9.2% year-on-year — a much softer decline than the 40%-plus annual drops recorded during the sharpest phase of the earlier slowdown in 2024.
Which nationality buys the most property in Turkey?
Russian citizens, by a consistent margin. In June 2026 alone, Russian buyers purchased 381 properties, more than double the next-largest nationality group that month.
Which Turkish provinces attract the most foreign buyers?
Istanbul, Antalya, and Mersin, in that order, consistently rank as the top three. On a full 2025 basis, Istanbul recorded 7,989 foreign purchases, Antalya 7,118, and Mersin 1,800.
Why has foreign buying activity slowed in Turkey?
A combination of factors: lira-denominated price increases partially offsetting currency-driven affordability, shifting economic and geopolitical conditions in key source markets like Russia and Iran, and increased competition from alternative markets such as Northern Cyprus, Oman, and the UAE.
Does a slowdown in foreign buying affect Turkey’s citizenship-by-investment programme?
Not directly. Turkey’s $400,000 citizenship-by-investment threshold has remained stable, and citizenship-motivated purchases are a distinct segment from the broader foreign-buyer statistics tracked here, which include purchases made for entirely different reasons (holiday homes, rental investment, relocation).
What share of Turkish property sales are mortgage-financed?
Roughly 20% as of mid-2026, up sharply from prior years. Mortgage-financed sales reached 142,794 units in H1 2026, up 32.2% year-on-year, reflecting some easing in financing conditions after a long period of elevated rates.
What percentage of Turkish home sales are new-build versus resale?
Nationally, roughly 32% new-build to 68% resale as of mid-2026, closely matching the Istanbul-specific 30/70 split. New-build sales have been growing modestly faster than resale sales in recent months.
Where does this data come from?
TÜİK (the Turkish Statistical Institute), Turkey’s official government statistics agency, publishes monthly property sales data by province, nationality, and financing method. This is the authoritative primary source behind the figures in this guide.
Is it a good time to buy in Turkey given the foreign-buyer slowdown?
The moderating (not collapsing) foreign-buyer trend, combined with continued strong domestic transaction volume and a rebounding mortgage market, suggests underlying market fundamentals remain solid even as the earlier foreign-buyer boom has cooled to a more sustainable pace. Buyers should still evaluate the specific city, district, and property type on its own merits rather than relying on national averages alone.
Which foreign nationalities are increasing their Turkish property purchases?
Most top nationalities, including Russia and Iran, have seen year-on-year declines in 2026, though the rate of decline has slowed considerably compared with 2024. Specific monthly rankings can shift, so current-month TÜİK data should be checked directly for the most up-to-date nationality breakdown.
