An expert spoke about the situation on the countryside real estate market

In Russia, the volume of supply in the segment of land plots has significantly increased compared to January-February 2024. This was told to "Izvestia" on February 14 by Anton Saukov, head of the countryside real estate center of the federal company "Etazhi".

"Now is a very interesting situation in the countryside real estate market in Russia. If last year there was an acute shortage of land plots, because they were actively bought up by investors and in January-February last year the demand in this segment was a record, this year we note a sharp increase in the volume of supply in the segment of land plots, such a volume of supply has not been for a long time," - explained the expert.

According to him, land plots are being offered not only by those who purchased them for investment purposes, but also by small developers who are selling part of their land fund in order to free up working capital against the background of the introduction of escrow accounts and the slump in demand in the construction segment

While investors try to sell their land plots sometimes above the market price, developers are ready to dump the market in order to speed up realization. At the same time, buying activity in January - early February 2025 was 30% lower than a year earlier.

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"In the current environment, this is justified by both the high cost of standard rate mortgages and increased prices. However, according to leading indicators, we should expect a sharp increase in demand in the countryside real estate segment, as the number of requests to build your own home in Russia has reached record levels over the past four years. As for prices, the situation is very ambiguous in the segment of houses," Saukov said.

Due to the introduction of escrow accounts for housing and communal housing, it is possible that the number of construction companies ready to build according to the new rules will be less, and in the conditions of expensive credit resources and labor, contracts for the construction of houses may rise in price by 15-20% this year.

"With regard to ready-made houses, the situation is slightly better, most likely, there will not be such a sharp increase, at least at the beginning of the season - no more than 5-10%, but as the volume of supply in the segment of ready-made houses decreases, the growth may accelerate. Land plots are frankly overvalued against the background of a large share of investment supply, as investors initially put the expected yield into the cost. The competition for a buyer is really high now, and in cases when owners are interested in urgent sale, the discount reaches 10-20%. We expect demand for land plots within one or two months, it may provoke the growth of average prices for them by another 5-10%", - summarized Saukov.

Earlier, on January 25, it was reported that in Russia increased the risk of a sharp rise in the cost of private homes due to the fact that it has become much more difficult to get approval for an application for a soft loan in some banks. For some banks this is a forced measure, so they cover their risks when issuing soft loans. Because of this, there are risks of growth in the cost of construction and purchase of ready-made country houses by 6-15%.