Translated material
Square meter of risk
Russians do not refuse such encumbrances as ownership of property. Some people need a house and a car for personal comfort. And someone, in managing their property as a business, finds a way of self-realization, the meaning of life. And business and the private property associated with it are not just work. This is not a service. This is personal self-affirmation. It’s a difficult matter, and the main burden is to bear the blow and bear the risks.
If you buy an apartment in order to rent out this property, you will need to pay a loan (if it was taken out to purchase an apartment) and taxes. It is necessary to manage the property so that some amount of personal income remains. This is a business risk. You need to be able to calculate it, evaluate it and make a decision. Those. buy an apartment or leave money in a bank account.
But there are other risks if you invest money in the construction of an apartment. And it doesn’t matter - for resale, for rent, or just to live with your family. It happens in life that a house is not built, the developer does not return either money or property. The court does not accept claims against fraudsters, since there are no such necessary articles of law. This is already a country or political risk.
We are talking about a risk born of the legal, economic and political system that has developed in Russia. This means that we ourselves, as voters, voted for such deputies of the State Duma, for such political parties that do not consider the issue of protecting private property to be important and a priority. Legislators in the State Duma are busy with anything, but not protecting human rights to their property. Why is this so?
For what reason do the courts consider it possible to pass sentences for bribes or at the direction of any administrative superiors? Whether the sentence strictly complies with the law is not so important for the career of a judge. Why is this so?
And this bosses themselves, the top of the bureaucracy, are almost independent of their compliance or non-compliance with the rights of private owners. Why are bureaucrats often criticized for everything but their lack of protection of property rights or their refusal to provide legal protections to property owners?
On October 8, elections will take place in a number of Russian regions. If we, voters, do not ask candidates the questions “how will the protection of property rights be ensured? What will the deputy do for this?”, then we will never receive any answer.
The authorities are convinced today that the broad mass of the people like attacks on private property, not its defense. As long as only people who, as they say, have neither a stake nor a yard, will participate as voters en masse in elections in Russia, as long as the authorities will remain convinced that they can deal with the property of both ordinary citizens and entrepreneurs at their own discretion. You can, for example, refuse to formalize it, although the law requires that the land be transferred to private ownership. You can then take it away and offer meager compensation. This is what they tried to do in South Butovo in Moscow.
Recently, my friends asked a question that puzzled me. “We,” they said, “are buying a three-room apartment at a price of 54 thousand rubles. per square meter. We take out a loan. Couldn’t the city or federal government, in order to “take care of ordinary people,” in a couple of years, take and introduce a law that a square meter cannot cost more than, say, 34 thousand rubles? Any sale of our apartment will then be at a loss.”
My first answer was quick: of course it can’t, it would violate both the laws and the Constitution itself. And then he began to sharpen the “worm of doubt”: what if principled opponents of private property gather in the State Duma? After all, the Soviet government in the twenties of the last century developed urban housing cooperatives, and in the thirties declared all these square meters to be state property. This is country risk.
“Think for yourself, decide for yourself - to have it or not to have it.” And if you have already decided to have property, then please take the time to go to the polling stations. Don’t turn your nose up at politics, at elections. It is necessary to elect such politicians who guarantee us all the rights that are important to us, private owners. We, Russians, need to learn to “remove” our country risks ourselves.