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- Construction balance: the government plans to improve the availability of mortgage loans for residential housing
Construction balance: the government plans to improve the availability of mortgage loans for residential housing
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin instructed relevant departments and organizations to develop initiatives to increase the availability of mortgages for individual housing. What are the main barriers preventing citizens from obtaining mortgages for the construction or purchase of individual housing in Russia today, as well as what measures can most effectively increase the availability of loans for residential housing — in the Izvestia article.
Support mechanisms
Since the beginning of March 2025, the provisions of Federal Law No. 186-FZ have entered into force, which fixed the procedure for using escrow accounts for the construction of individual residential buildings under contract agreements, the press service of the Ministry of Construction reminded Izvestia. Since the entry into force of the regulations, over 12,000 such agreements have already been drawn up.
The adopted mechanism, as noted in the department, is aimed at ensuring the financial security of citizens during the construction process.: it allows you to save the invested funds until the completion of the work and prevents their possible loss if the contractor does not fulfill its obligations. The construction of private houses is carried out by construction companies, including with the use of house kits, on plots owned or leased by citizens.
"According to requirements No. 186-F3, contractors post publicly available information and information about themselves, about residential housing projects that are being built by contractors, about an authorized bank in which the customer opens an escrow account (if the contractor has attracted funds from a targeted loan for the construction of individual residential buildings), about concluded and executed construction contracts, thereby forming an objective business reputation, allowing the customer to make an informed choice of the construction company," the ministry said.
At the same time, it is necessary to preserve the simplicity and convenience of registering residential buildings for citizens, according to the Ministry of Construction. In this regard, Federal Law No. 186-FZ provides for the possibility of registering a house as a property under a simplified scheme operating under the so-called dacha amnesty. In addition, starting from July 2, 2024, the terms of preferential mortgage programs such as "Family Mortgage" and "Mortgage for employees of IT companies" apply to the construction of individual residential buildings exclusively using escrow accounts.
According to the information of "Dom.In the first eight months of 2025, about 16.9 thousand loans were provided to citizens for the construction of individual residential buildings totaling about 122.9 billion rubles, Ekaterina Shchurikhina, director of bank ratings at Expert RA agency, told Izvestia. This indicator is noticeably lower than the results of the previous year, due to increased interest rates and the completion in mid-2024 of a concessional lending program designed for a wide range of borrowers.
At the same time, almost all loans for the construction of private homes, according to her, were issued under government-supported programs: in August 2025 alone, such loans accounted for about 98% of the total, of which about 82% were "Family mortgages."
— Mortgages for residential housing, as well as loans for the purchase of housing in apartment buildings, are limited by high interest rates. There has also been a significant increase in construction costs and materials over the past few years," the expert noted.
According to her data, banks are usually less active in issuing mortgage loans for individual housing construction, since estimating and predicting the cost of collateral for such facilities is a certain difficulty. An additional deterrent factor is the risks associated with the possible unfinished construction of the house or violation of the deadlines for its commissioning.
However, the introduction of an escrow account system for residential housing since 2025 significantly reduces such risks for both banks and borrowers. It is expected that the development of mortgage lending in this area will be supported by a general reduction in interest rates and increased use of the escrow mechanism.
Prospects for change
To solve the current problems in the field of mortgage lending to residential housing, it is proposed to revise the Central Bank's key rate in order to reduce the cost of loans and introduce regulatory relief for contractors working with escrow accounts, especially for representatives of small and medium-sized businesses, Dmitry Osyanin, PhD in Economics, Associate professor of the basic Department of Financial Control, Analysis and audit of the Main Control Department of the City of Moscow, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. An important area is also the expansion of government support measures, such as increasing the number of preferential programs and easing their conditions for various categories of borrowers.
Additionally, in his opinion, it is necessary to actively inform citizens about the possibilities of financing individual construction, the development of comprehensive loan products combining the purchase of land and the construction of housing, as well as the formation of partnership programs between banks and reliable developers to increase transparency and trust in the residential housing market.
— Achieving positive changes requires a systematic approach involving regulators and market participants. With the effective implementation of support measures, the recovery of pre—crisis indicators in the segment of individual housing construction can occur by the middle of 2026, the expert believes.
One of the main challenges for the individual housing construction market is the significant heterogeneity of the facilities being built — differences are evident in the location, materials used, level of engineering infrastructure, construction technology and overall quality of houses, an expert from the Popular Front told Izvestia. Analytics", General Director of the Rating Agency of the Construction Complex (RASK) Fyodor Vylomov. Because of this, it is difficult for banks to accurately determine the real value of housing under construction as collateral. For credit institutions, such uncertainty means an increase in possible risks, so they are forced to offer less attractive loan terms to customers, compensating for potential losses.
"One of the instructions of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is aimed at eliminating this problem: the creation of a system of impersonal object—by—object statistics on individual housing will allow us to build unified assessment models, reduce uncertainty for banks and make loans more affordable," he stressed.
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