TurkStat's 2025 final numbers: foreign property sales fell to a 9-year low

The Türkiye Statistical Institute (TurkStat) released its consolidated 2025 foreign-buyer figures on 22 April 2026. The numbers confirm what the monthly releases through 2025 had suggested: foreign property sales fell to 21,534 units, down 9.4% year-on-year and the lowest annual count since 2017. Foreigners accounted for 1.3% of all home sales in Türkiye in 2025, down from 1.5% in 2024 and from the 4.8% peak in 2022.

The number is a real signal, but it is misread as often as it is read.

What the headline means and does not mean

A 9-year low looks like distress. It is not. The decline reflects three things, in roughly equal weight.

First, the threshold reset. The June 2022 move from $250,000 to $400,000 cut roughly half the eligible demand out of the lower price band. The full effect of that reset took two full years to work through the buyer-decision pipeline.

Second, the lira’s stabilisation. The 2021–2022 lira crash made Turkish property look cheap to dollar and euro buyers. The lira’s relative stability through 2024 and 2025 narrowed that arbitrage. The buyers who were going to come for currency-driven discount have largely come; the ones now buying are buying for the citizenship reason or for the residency reason, not the price reason.

Third, the 2025 compliance pass and the closed-mahalle regime. Source-of-funds documentation tightened. Russian and Iranian applicants who had been moving in volume in 2022–2023 face longer banking timelines. Spouse residence permits and biometric fingerprinting added friction.

Who is buying in 2025

The buyer mix shifted notably.

Nationality	2024 units	2025 units	Change
Russia	3,841	3,649	−5.0%
Iran	2,021	1,878	−7.1%
Ukraine	1,712	1,541	−10.0%
Iraq	1,309	1,289	−1.5%
Germany	1,205	1,178	−2.2%
Kazakhstan	982	989	+0.7%
Azerbaijan	822	778	−5.4%
China	612	681	+11.3%
United Kingdom	561	597	+6.4%
Saudi Arabia	489	522	+6.7%

Russia is still the largest buyer cohort by a wide margin, but the share is the lowest since 2021. Chinese buyers are up 11% year on year, reflecting the maturation of the E-2 sequencing strategy that the E-2 page lays out. Saudi and UK buyers each ticked up modestly. Ukrainian volumes are off about 10% as the post-2022 wave has largely settled.

The city breakdown:

City	2025 units	Share
Istanbul	7,989	37.1%
Antalya	7,118	33.1%
Mersin	1,800	8.4%
Bursa	729	3.4%
Yalova	612	2.8%

Istanbul and Antalya together took two-thirds of the foreign-buyer market in 2025; this share has been stable for three years.

What it means for a 2026 buyer

The market is quieter, but it is not collapsing. The right reading is that quality stock in good Istanbul districts and Antalya’s western coast is now negotiable in a way it was not in 2022. The dollar buyer in 2026 has more negotiating room than at any point in the last four years.

Three operational implications:

• Asking prices in Istanbul European-side new-build are not the closing prices. Five to twelve per cent discounts off the developer’s list are routine for cash dollar buyers in 2026.
• Antalya’s Konyaaltı and Lara markets have stock; the 9% Russian-buyer decline has loosened inventory. Time to listing-to-close is back to 2019 levels.
• Mersin’s Tece district came off the closed-mahalle list in the April 2026 refresh; the city is workable again for buyers who specifically want Mersin pricing.

For the buyer who is planning the file in 2026, this is a buyer’s market within a programme that still works. The number of foreigners who close on a citizenship-grade property each year is smaller than it was. The conditions for the ones who do close are, on the whole, better.

See also

• The 2026 programme guide for the rules under which all of this happens.
• The Russian, Iranian and Chinese nationality pages for the buyer-side picture.
• The Istanbul guide and Antalya guide for the city-level detail behind these numbers.