The availability of housing in Russia has grown nominally
The nominal increase in new buildings on average in Russia turned out to be lower than inflation. At the same time, the income level of the population, on the contrary, began to grow, which led to an increase in the availability of housing. But the purchase of an apartment in a new building for cash or a preferential mortgage is still available, while acquisition with the involvement of a loan at market rates is still not affordable for the most part of Russians.
The increase in prices for new buildings has stopped, which, in conjunction with an increase in the incomes of the population, led to an increase in the availability of housing in Russia. This thesis is given by the Institute of Economics of the City (IEG) in its study, which Kommersant acquainted. According to the estimates of the Dom.rf analytical center, in April 2025, the rated prices for housing under construction throughout the Russian Federation rose by 9% of the year, which was less inflation, which in annual terms amounted to 10.23%. Real income (deducting mandatory payments and adjusted for inflation) of Russian citizens in the first quarter of 2025 increased by 8.4% a year by the year, follows from the data of Rosstat.
This trend has been observed throughout 2024. According to IEG estimates, last year, housing has increased by 6.7% year by the year: the housing affordability coefficient was three years and three months. It is during this period that a family of three with average per capita income can accumulate 54 square meters for an apartment. m subject to the savings of all income. The share of Russian families with the opportunity to purchase housing with both their own and borrowed funds, including preferential mortgages, turned out to be maximum over the past 20 years – 58.7%, analysts said.
In 2024, the availability of housing increased in the seven largest agglomerations: the Krasnodar, Novosibirsk, Voronezh, Vladivostok, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, IEG Vice President Tatyana Polydi. In the Rostov, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Saratov, Krasnoyarsk and Volgograd, the availability has decreased slightly, and in the Yekaterinburg, Perm, Samara-Togliattinskaya and Nizhny Novgorod, she said.
403.1 thousand rubles per square meter
It was the average cost of housing in the primary real estate market in Moscow in May 2025, according to Cyan. Analytics.
In fact, the growth of population incomes for 2023–2024 (on average in Russia – by 39%) compensated for the increase in housing prices during this period, which amounted to 18%, Tatyana Polydi notes. Although it is precisely an increase in income that traditionally stimulates the increase in prices for new buildings, it stopped after limiting the preferential mortgage programs, she explains. In July 2024, the mass preferential mortgage ended after four years of action. This once again confirmed the presence of a conjunctural nature of the growth of housing prices in new buildings during the validity of preferential programs, Ms. Polydi believes. After the cancellation of mass preferential mortgage, the demand for new buildings also decreased. According to the results of 2024, 26.7 million square meters were acquired in the Russian Federation as a whole in the Russian Federation. m of housing, which is 22% less than a year by the year, is specified in Dom.rf.
Although 70% of the total mortgage issuance in 2024 was precisely for preferential programs, including family, Far Eastern and IT MIP, the availability of housing with a market mortgage decreased. The proportion of families, which is available to purchase in a mortgage under market conditions, decreased from 54% in 2020 to 22% in 2024, said in IEG. This happened due to a serious rise in cost of credit products. In the last week of December 2024, the weighted average mortgage rate on the primary market was 29.39%per annum, a year earlier-16.26%, at the end of 2020-7.91%, follows from the data of the NA.DODU.rf information system.
The growth of real disposable income when slowing down housing prices does not mean that housing is becoming more affordable.
It is also important to take into account the high level of income inequality, says Ruslan Syrtsov, managing director of Metrium. The average indicator can only increase due to the growth of capital income, for example, from the same deposits, a small part of Russians, which does not affect the availability of housing for the majority, he explains. Inflation is also an extremely averaged indicator, and for many segments of the population it is much higher than average, if in their costs, food products that usually value more than average inflation are added to their expenses, Mr. Syrtsov adds.
The head of the analytical center « Dom.rf » Mikhail Goldberg is sure that the real accessibility of housing will begin to increase only as monetary policy normalizes. The director for mortgage sales and the implementation of financial instruments of the A101 GC A101, Rustam Azizov, does not exclude the increase in the shortage of new buildings due to a decrease in the pace of the withdrawal of new projects to the market, which « will inevitably lead to an increase in prices. »
