World’s hottest housing market swept by record Russian purchases

RUSSIANS became the top foreign buyers of real estate in Turkey last year, helping sustain the world’s hottest housing market by tripling their purchases as sanctions over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine drove them to invest abroad.

Russian nationals bought a record 16,312 homes in Turkey in 2022, according to data released on Tuesday (Jan 17) by the Turkish Statistical Institute. That’s a 203 per cent increase from 2021 and represents almost a quarter of all sales to foreigners.

“Antalya is becoming Russified,” said Ali Kemal Gurdal, a property developer in the Mediterranean city. Many Russian buyers are applying for citizenship, a right granted to those who buy homes for at least US$400,000, he said.

Even when adjusted for inflation, Turkey had the fastest rate of home price growth in the year to the third quarter of 2022, according to the latest report by real-estate consultant Knight Frank that covered 56 countries.

Knight Frank’s Global House Price Index showed property prices in Turkey posted real growth of 57.6 per cent in the third quarter, a period of record inflation in the country.

Sales to foreign nationals in the southern province of Antalya, a popular holiday spot, rose 77 per cent to 21,860. Iranians, who fell from first to second place in 2022, bought 8,223 homes, followed by Iraqis and Germans.

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“Business is booming,” Gurdal said. BLOOMBERG