The Turkish Statistical Institute announced house sales statistics of December 2014 on Friday. Throughout Turkey, 1,165,381 houses were sold in 2014 which represented a 0.7 percent increase compared to 2013's figure of 1,157,190. In December 2014 alone, 134,666 houses were sold, an increase of 16.3 percent compared to December 2013.In 2014, 225,454 houses were sold in Istanbul, representing the highest share of any city in Turkey with 19.3 percent of all house sales. It was followed by Ankara with 131,825 houses sold, representing a 11.3 percent share, and Izmir with 71,779 houses sold representing a 6.2 percent share. Ardahan sits at the bottom of the list with 157 house sales.Mortgaged sales made up 33.4 percent of all house sales and 389,689 houses were sold with a mortgage. 18,959 houses were sold to foreigners with Antalya topping the list of foreign brought homes with 6,542 sales, followed by Istanbul's 5,580, Aydın's 1,191 and Muğla's 1,051 sales.Of all house sales, 59.7 percent were bought by men and 29.5 percent were bought by women. 2.4 percent of sales were acquired jointly. In December 2014, 26,698 houses were sold in Istanbul, followed by Ankara with 14,794 and Izmir with 8,482 houses. Their shares were respectively 19.8 percent, 11 percent and 6.3 percent. The number of mortgaged sales increased by 18.6 percent compared to December 2013, and 32 percent of all December 2014 house sales were made with mortgages. 65,844 houses were sold for the first time.