January 25, 2017, 00:42 / Real estate

Russians began to build less

Housing commissioning in the country decreased by 6.5% due to a reduction in individual construction Bela Lauw

Housing commissioning in Russia in 2016 decreased by 6.5% - experts expected a larger drop / E. Kuzmina / Vedomosti

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According to preliminary data from the regions, 79.8 million square meters were commissioned in Russia last year. m of housing, a representative of the Ministry of Construction told Vedomosti. This is 6.5% less than in 2015, a record year for the entire post-Soviet period. However, the final result may be adjusted to 81 million square meters. m - the count for a number of regions is still ongoing, a representative of the Ministry of Construction clarifies. Almost a third of new housing construction occurs in the Central Federal District (see infographic).

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“The main decrease was due to individual housing construction; the commissioning of multi-apartment housing has shown record numbers for the third year in a row,” comments Minister of Construction and Housing and Communal Services Mikhail Men. The decline falls on the individual housing construction sector, according to a report from a government analytical center. If in 2010–2014 The share of individual houses built by the population consistently accounted for 43–44% of the total area of completed housing in Russia, then in 2016 – 39.5% (48.2 million sq. m). For comparison: in 2015, 50.15 million square meters of apartment buildings were commissioned. m, and individual – 35.2 million sq. m. m. Thus, individual construction last year fell by 10.2%, and industrial housing construction by 3.9%.

Another reason for the decline is the decrease in the size of individual houses. The average area of a new home decreased by 4% in 2015 – from 136 to 130 sq. m. m (Rosstat data, no more recent ones).

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Fears about a sharp drop were not justified - it was insignificant, nothing terrible happened, comments Leonid Kazinets, president of the Barkley company, who heads the ASI working group to improve the investment climate in construction. Despite the crisis, construction volumes have not fallen as might have been expected, agrees Oleg Repchenko, head of irn.ru. “People don’t have money, so individual construction is declining, and developers are still building a lot - despite all the difficulties, it’s profitable,” he explains. This is logical: the population reacts faster to changes in market conditions, says RASK General Director Nikolai Alekseenko.

Repchenko associates the stability of the commissioning of apartment buildings with state support for the industry: “Most builders regarded this as a political vector - build, we will support you.” “During the crisis, the state began to subsidize mortgages for the purchase of new buildings. This has greatly improved the industry. In addition, the market has become more professional, companies with the same project are disappearing. Administrative barriers are being reduced - for example, the time required to obtain permits has been halved,” lists Kazinets.

The need of Russians to improve their living conditions remains, the problem is in effective demand, Repchenko believes. According to a survey by VTsIOM, the total demand for housing in the five-year period is 300 million square meters. m.

In Moscow, input fell more sharply – by 14%, Repchenko recalls. In the capital, housing prices are traditionally high, but in the regions they are closer to the people, which is why developers continue to work as before, he explains.

They won’t build much less, but competition will get tougher, Repchenko predicts. Because of this, in his opinion, prices will gradually “slide down” - by 5–10%. Alekseenko also believes that commissioning will remain at a level close to 2016, but developers will have to improve the quality of housing and offer projects with interesting and developed infrastructure.

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Kazinets recalls the commissioning target of 100 million square meters named by President Vladimir Putin. m: “This is real, but it is necessary to continue to subsidize mortgages (the state program will end on March 1, 2017 - Vedomosti) so that the rate drops to 9.5%. This injects 10 times the amount of the subsidy into the economy.”

This year, to maintain and increase the pace of housing construction, the Ministry of Construction will support the construction of large residential neighborhoods in 33 regions, Men says. According to him, 66 residential microdistrict projects will receive financial support this year as part of the “Mortgage and Rental Housing” project, which the department is implementing jointly with the Agency for Housing Mortgage Lending (AHML). For example, the Vostochno-Kruglikovsky microdistrict in Krasnodar (600,000 sq. m), “Salavat Kupere” in Tatarstan (314,000 sq. m), etc.

“In total, until 2020, 20 billion rubles will be allocated. to provide infrastructure for sites where integrated residential construction projects will be implemented. In addition, there will be direct subsidies for social and intra-block transport infrastructure,” says Men.

This support can provide up to 10–15% of the total input in 2017, Alekseenko believes.

Anna Shcherbakova contributed to the preparation of this article.