Foreigners purchased 22,234 properties across Turkey in 2017, a 22.2 per cent year-on-year increase from the previous years, official data showed.
Sales to foreigners had declined 20.3 per cent in 2016 compared with the previous year, dropping to 18,189 units amid various security concerns, Turkish daily Hurriyet reported on Friday.
Iraqis bought 3, 805 units in Turkey in 2017, according to data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK). They were followed by Saudis with 3,345 units, Kuwaitis with 1,691 units, Russians with 1,331 units and Afghans with 1,078 units.
In house sales to foreigners, Istanbul was the number one province with 8,182 units in 2017, TÜİK data showed.
The Mediterranean resort of Antalya was the second most popular province with 4,707 units sold to foreigners, followed by the nortwestern provinces of Bursa and Yalova, with 1,474 units and 1,079 units respectively, the daily added.
The total number of property sales across Turkey rose 5.1 per cent in 2017 compared with the previous year. Last year, 1.4 million residential properties were sold, while Istanbul had the largest share of house sales with 238,383 units representing 16.9 per cent of the sales.
TÜİK said the capital Ankara and the Aegean province of İzmir racked up 150,561 (10.7 per cent) and 84,184 (6 per cent) of total housing sales respectively.
In Turkey, 473,099 of all sales were mortgaged sales and 936,215 were other house sales, according to TÜİK data. There was also a 5.2 per cent year-on-year increase in the number of mortgaged property sales in Turkey in 2017.

Source: BNA