The Housing Development Administration of Turkey (TOKİ) will construct approximately 425,000 houses in the upcoming seven years in accordance with Turkey's 2023 vision marking the republic's centenary, TOKİ head Mehmet Ergün Turan said Sunday.

Speaking at the Uludağ Economy Summit in northwestern Bursa province, Turan said that the real estate sector achieved a cautious growth rate in 2016 against all odds. "With the effect of decreasing interest rates and campaigns that we supported with TOKİ's subsidiary companies, house sales increased especially in the last period of 2016 and exceeded 1.34 million with the cooperation of private and public sectors," Turan said.

He noted that the construction spending reached nearly 450 billion Turkish liras ($124 billion) in 2016, with the sector's share reaching 8.9 percent of Turkey's GDP and its indirect share with affiliated sectors reaching up to 30 percent.

Turan said that the number of house constructions per year doubled in Turkey in the last 10 years and reached 750,000 houses a year in 2016, and added that nearly six million houses need to be renewed over time, which shows a bright future for Turkey's construction sector.

He said that TOKİ will hold tenders for 65,000 houses in 2017, slightly higher than 64,000 houses in 2016, of which some 95 percent were spared for public housing projects.