A spatiotemporal exploratory analysis of real estate sales in Turkey using GIS

The purpose of this paper is to examine the real estate sales in Turkey on a district basis to reveal the current state of real estate sales and any meaningful changes in the last period. The real estate market is important and is an indicator of the country’s general economic health, as real estate is seen as an investment.

As a powerful method of spatial analysis and evaluation, geographic information systems have been used to examine real estate data in both spatial and temporal ways. In this study, 14 years of sales data covering the years 2004 to 2017 obtained from government agencies on a district basis were evaluated using spatiotemporal methods. Several maps were produced using Getis-Ord Gi* and local Moran’s I indices, which showed the spatiotemporal change of sales and sales rates.

When looking at the maps, provinces such as Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Antalya and their surrounding districts have buoyant real estate markets compared to the other side of the country. Real estate sales are more stagnant in the eastern and northern parts of the country. In addition, the authors found that the growth rate of annual average real estate sales was approximately seven times higher than the annual average population growth.

This spatiotemporal study, which presents 14 years of performance data of the real estate market and, by extension, the economic situation, also highlights the regions that stand out for investment planning throughout the country. The results of spatiotemporal analysis also present a new way of real estate market visualization using maps with well-designed categorizations.