The Housing Market in Russia’s Cities in 2019

In 2019, the macroeconomic indicators directly affecting the housing market were the following. The consumer price index stood at 3 percent, households' income movement which is important for the housing market in the course of the major part of the year (after a plunge in Q1) posted positive. Over 2019 as a whole, the real disposable cash income of the population gained less than 1percent. The RF Central Bank repeatedly reduced its key rate over the course of last year hitting 6.25 percent in December 2019. Nevertheless, borrowers' activity and the amount of housing mortgage lending (HML) was below that seen last year. According to the Bank of Russia, in 2019 Russia saw a total of 1.27 million extended mortgages to the tune of RUB 2.85 trillion against 1.47 million totaling RUB 3.01 trillion in 2018, in other words the decline came to 13.6 percent in loans-terms and 5.3 percent in volume-terms. The share of mortgage loans originated for shared-equity construction in the total volume of extended loans of all types constituted in 2019 6.6 percent against 7 percent in 2018. That said, the share of mortgages issued for shared-equity construction in the aggregate volume of solely mortgage loans went up from 28.8 to 32.4 percent