At the end of this summer, analysts of the company “MIEL-rent” with some surprise, said: for the first time in 3 years the demand for rental apartments in the capital in August oversubscribed. And quite significantly — from 14.5%. In explaining this phenomenon, experts were quick to resort to traditional formulas. Say, for summer is “high season” for rental. At the same time, according to Director Maria Zhukova, has proved itself and pent-up demand: tenants waited-waited for lower prices, but the time played against them, so it was decided not to procrastinate and to take shelter until September.
Also, “milici” stated that the most active tenants and landlords revealed in the segment of one-bedroom apartments. And activity was so high that in this case the demand exceeded supply by as much as 28%.
Summing up the first month of autumn, representatives of the company “INKOM-real Estate” said: the exposure time of the flats for the recruitment compared to the same period last year decreased markedly. If then for making a decision about the rent the tenant was required two and a half weeks, now, according to the Director of the relevant “inamescope” Department Oksana Polyakova, cheap apartments find temporary guests in a couple of days.
If you put aside lying on the surface of the arguments about the seasonality of the rental market of real estate, as well as the features of the economic situation, and to dig a little deeper, comparing some of the facts, it appears that the driving reason for such a demand for rented apartments look pretty scary.
The first thing you need to pay attention to the closest, albeit largely been formal, but still territorial neighbor — Moscow oblast.
According to the information Analytical center under the Government of the Russian Federation, a region with a 2010 retains the status of leader in terms of new housing. In particular, only the first 8 months of this year, according to data Mosoblstat here have already commissioned more than 62 thousand apartments, total area of which exceeds 4.5 million square meters (+115,9% compared to the same period last year). And by the end of December, says the regional Minister of building Sergey Pakhomov, this figure could reach 7 or even 8 million “squares”.
At first glance, nothing major there, increase the volume and pace of construction is a normal business response to the crisis phenomena in the economy.
However, in June the chief architect of the regional Scientific-research and design Institute (PMU NIIP MO) Alexander Antonov during a round table discussion on urban policy in the region, warned the zeal of the builders leads to the fact that existing around the capital settlement faster merge into a terrifying with their size of a single agglomeration. The most striking example is the so-called “Carotide”. It is a single entity, in fact, the cities that already includes Queens, Ivanteevka, Pushkino, Mytishchi and a number of other settlements. And if this process does not slow down, then after 15 years within a radius of 30 kilometers from the capital on a place of meadows, forests and agricultural land will rise a solid stone jungle, of which only the share of residential high-rises will have 110 million “squares”.
The regional authorities may, and would be happy to take appropriate measures to preserve the “green belt” (and trying, by the way, to do this by reducing, for example, the issuance of building permits), but they are hampered by a strong lobby of developers. Which, incidentally, is not eager to invest in the development of transport infrastructure, somehow, with difficulty, agreeing only on the construction of some objects of social infrastructure.
Moreover, the position of defenders of active construction could still somehow understand if all these buildings were actively occupied. But the thing is that, as is clear from materials of the same Mosoblstat, from January to August 2016, the turnover involved is only about 1.8 million square meters of the total volume of commissioned residential real estate. But where is the rest?
First, according to information obtained by media representatives from analytical companies oneFactor, 39% suburban buildings sold in initially pure investment purposes, 16% for resale or lease, and a further 23% are simply empty.
Second, even those people who bought in the suburbs of the apartment for the purpose of residence, seeking to get rid of them. Many of them, lured advertising promises (having little in common with the real situation), they sold their modest by Metropolitan standards, flats to let and for a fee, but the move to more spacious housing. Their dreams about the comfort of the suburbs vanished into dust. Junk cars are not able to pick up the waste from the areas because the driveways are narrow and busy personal vehicles. The doctors for the same reasons you go on a call a few hours instead of several minutes, schools are overcrowded, places in kindergartens is still not enough. It is no wonder that people want to return to the capital. But due to the fact that the square meters in the area are falling in price more rapidly than in the capital, the most that they can expect within the Moscow ring road, are those removable “odnushki” (“kopeck piece”), the hype around which moves the capital of realtors to talk about the rise of the rental market.
As you know, “Holy place is never empty”, and empty for one reason or another, the apartments in these unnaturally huge regional agglomerations gradually be buyers. Most often it is completely unassuming to the comfortable living conditions, migrants from the former Soviet republics and the southern regions of Russia. These, in the apt words of former adviser of Department of development of the RHD Foundation, the architect Andrei Ivanov, “the new nomads” absolutely no interest in infrastructure development, or in preservation of the environment. They are concerned exclusively with their own survival. In connection with constant expansion of such Diaspora settlements, local residents prefer to move away from them. A vivid example of such situation can be considered the region Lyubertsy-Kotelniki with their proximity to the shopping center “green thumb”.
So the continuation of mass housing construction in the Moscow suburbs in any case may soon lead to the fact that the capital will be surrounded by either a Ghost town, similar to Chinese, Cambashi and Chenguo or ghetto area with a specific population. And the capital region is in danger of slowly but surely to repeat the fate of the American Detroit. But it seems that the folding process of the construction of new residential complexes in the region are not threatened. Even against the background of constant ranting about the fact that the developers now don’t get almost any profits from the sale of real estate, the difference between the average cost (according to the Analytical center under the Government of the Russian Federation, which is about 46.7 thousand rubles) and the market price (according to CYANOGEN, the 88 thousand) is still too tempting to be on such profits. Especially if you multiply it by 99 million “squares” (in this volume builders already obtained permission).
