Last month,  97,019 houses were sold in Turkey -- 44,363 houses were sold for the first time while the rest were second-hand sales -- TurkStat reported. 

Istanbul -- Turkey's most populated city and one of its top tourist draws -- boasted the largest share of house sales with 16.8 percent, or 16,336 houses, the institute said.

Official data showed that the capital Ankara and the Aegean province of Izmir followed Istanbul with 9,720 (10 percent) and 5,841 (6 percent) housing sales, respectively.

"House sales with a mortgage represented a 29.6-percent share of all house sales in Turkey," TurkStat said.

In 2017, 1.4 million residential properties were sold in Turkey, with a 5.1 percent annual hike compared to the previous year.