PIK Group can build 500 thousand square meters of housing in the Far East

In the coming days, the PIK Group may sign an agreement with the Ministry for the Development of the Far East (Ministry of Far Eastern Development) on the commercial construction of housing in individual cities in the region. The Vedomosti newspaper writes about this, citing sources familiar with the details of the negotiations. According to them, the company can build from 300 thousand to 500 thousand square meters of housing.

A representative of the Ministry of Eastern Development told the publication that the possibility of signing an agreement between the Far East Agency for Attracting Investments and Supporting Exports, PIK and the governments of four regions is being discussed. He also added that representatives of the developer will hold meetings with the heads of Primorsky and Khabarovsk territories.

According to the chairman of the board of directors of the Best-Novostroy company, Irina Dobrokhotova, the largest cities of the Far East - Khabarovsk and Vladivostok - are probably of greatest interest to the developer, she points out. A PIK representative declined to comment on rumors about construction plans in the Far East.

Let us remind you that the PIK group is currently the largest developer of residential real estate in Russia. Thus, at the end of 2018, the company, according to Infoline Building Russia, built more than 1.9 million square meters of housing, more than twice ahead of the second-place LSR group in this indicator.

According to the managing partner of the Metrium company, Maria Litinetskaya, the company may need 32-35 billion rubles to build 500 thousand square meters of housing. At the same time, she called the local housing market potentially high-margin, noting that in August of this year the cost of construction in the Primorsky Territory was 69 thousand rubles per square meter, with the average cost per square meter in a new building being 110 thousand rubles.

Dobrokhotova, in turn, noted that the state is actively developing the Far East, and developers can receive certain preferences in terms of allocating land plots and connecting to communications. Litinetskaya pointed out the low quality of local new buildings in terms of architecture and layouts - in her opinion, a developer from Moscow has the opportunity to transfer the capital’s experience to a profitable market, where there is pent-up demand for housing of a qualitatively new level.

As the publication notes, other large developers have previously tried to work in the Far East. For example, the Morton group, which joined PIK in 2016, several years ago entered into an agreement with the Ministry of Eastern Development for the development of an area of ​​6,500-8,500 hectares on Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island. The project included the creation of a logistics, business, medical and recreational tourism cluster, as well as the construction of approximately 10 million square meters of real estate. As a result, the project was not implemented.