ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraqis were the most prolific foreign buyers of homes in Turkey in 2019, according to a Turkish statistical authority, helping to buoy the country’s struggling housing market. Despite an overall drop in Turkey's housing sales, a total of 45,500 residential units were sold to foreigners in 2019 - a 14.7 percent increase on the previous year. Iraqi citizens bought the most homes of any foreign nationals, purchasing 7,596 units. They were followed in number by Iranians, Russians, and Saudis, Daily Sabah reported on Wednesday, citing the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat). Most of the sales were made in Istanbul, the cultural capital of Turkey. In December 2019 alone, Iraqis bought 900 Turkish residential units in Turkey, while ongoing deadly protests at home against rampant poverty, unemployment and corruption, among other grievances were taking place. Nazmi Durbakayim, head of the Istanbul Constructors Association, said he expects 2020 to be a lucrative year for a Turkish real estate sector recovering from decline. "The index of confidence in the construction sector, which declined from 94% to 68% in 2019, seems on the rise again," he said. Ahmet Erkurtogu, deputy head of the Turkish Construction Contractors' Association in Istanbul's Anatolian side, said housing sales in the country were recovering well. "Housing sales have topped the 100,000 mark in recent months, and exceeded the 200,000 mark last December for the first time." "We can sell around 1.2-1.3 million housing units in 2020 again, we aim to sell 60,000 units to foreigners in 2020," he underlined. Buyers from Arab countries have been among the top purchasers of Turkish real estate in recent years. Arab buyers owned 11.2 million square meters of land in Turkey in February 2019, Birgun news outlet reported the environment and urban affairs minister Murat Kurum as saying in December. Turkey and Iraq conduct a significant amount of wider trade. Trade volume between Ankara and Baghdad has hovered between $10-12 billion in the last few years; senior Turkish officials have demanded that amount be doubled. Most of the trade was conducted via the Kurdistan Region’s Ibrahim Khalil crossing border.
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