The number of overseas visitors to Turkey has risen by almost 40% over the past year, and with the country’s economy picking up pace, the property market is attracting growing interest from foreign investors.
In the year to January 2018, the number of properties sold to overseas buyers in Turkey rose dramatically by 25.7%, according to Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), with Istanbul seeing 545 such transactions take place this January. Antalya, another popular region of the country thanks to its coastal position, saw 424 properties sold to foreign investors in the same month.
The increased interest can be attributed to a number of factors, according to Spot Blue International Property, including the country’s bullish economy, its weak currency and the influx in the tourism industry over the past year.
Potential for investment
TurkStat data for the third quarter of last year demonstrated that Turkey had the fastest growing economy of any G20 country, with GDP growth of 11.1%. Meanwhile, the country’s currency, the Lira, has been falling for a number of years, with the exchange rate to Sterling now at 0.19. This has proven to be good news to foreign investors, making the market much more affordable for those looking to buy, as well as increasing its popularity among tourists hoping to make their money stretch further.
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Turkey’s culture and tourism minister, Numan Kurtulmus, believes the country will receive 38 million visiting tourists this year, after last year saw the number of foreign visitors rise by 38.48%, although the government target is 50 million tourists a year by 2023. For property investors, the extra visitors will mean improved prospects for rental properties, as well as the added investment that could come with the higher footfall.
With a new major airport, Istanbul New Airport, due to open later this year, capacity for air travel to Turkey is set to rise, and an estimated 230 million passengers are expected to land in the country in the year ahead, up from 192.34 million in 2017.
