May 2026 Foreign Property Sales: TurkStat Numbers Show a Quiet Bottom

TurkStat released the May 2026 foreign property sales numbers on 6 June. The headline: 1,892 dwellings sold to foreigners, against 1,887 in April and 1,945 in May 2025. Flat month, narrowly down year-on-year. That sounds dull, and the dullness is the point.

The country mix shifted again

• Russia rebounded to 19% of the foreign book, up from 15% in April, the highest share since the early-2024 sanctions-era peak.
• Iran lifted to 14%, helped by a quiet bank-corridor improvement in the last quarter.
• Germany dropped to 9%, the lowest reading since the 2024 dual-citizenship reform kick-started German interest. Three months of softening, not one.
• Iraq, Ukraine, Kuwait stable at single-digit shares each.
• Saudi Arabia at 6%, tracking the slow drift down that has been the story since 2024.

The Russian share’s reappearance is the most pressed signal in this dataset. If it sustains for another month, we’ll write about why. Right now, one month does not make a trend; three would.

City distribution

Istanbul kept its share above a third (35%), Antalya at 24%, Mersin reached 7% for the first time in three years, Trabzon at 5%, Bursa 4%, Yalova back to relevance at 3%. The Mersin number is worth flagging because the city has been quietly absorbing Syrian-passport interest that used to go to Hatay, and the volume now matters for citizenship-route arithmetic.

What it means for buyers in 2026

A flat, low-volume market is the buyer’s market. We’re seeing developers carrying unsold citizenship-spec inventory negotiate harder than at any point since 2021. The math has tipped enough that appraisal-first sequencing now routinely beats sticker-price negotiations: the appraisal closes the deal at value-not-list, while leaving the buyer’s source-of-funds story unscathed. Documentation discipline still wins over the marketing pitch every time.

For broader context, the TurkStat 2025 final numbers explain the floor this print is bouncing off.

We re-verify these numbers monthly. If the June print breaks the flat pattern in either direction, you’ll read it here within a week of TurkStat releasing.