The Bank of Russia, the country’s central bank, has now raised rates by 7.5 percentage points since July
Holy crap, 7.5% in (basically) 1 quarter. Imagine trying to buy a house and having your loan repayment amount jumping faster than you can get paperwork filed.
So your comment made me go “lol, imagine buying a house in Russia.” Meaning my preconceptions were that most in Russia didn’t have the means to own a home.
But then I’m like, I don’t actually know that, let’s check it out.
According to this site home ownership in Russia is over 90%. So what you outlined is a real problem for people there, and changes some of my mental picture of Russian life.
If home ownership is 90% that doesn’t sound like a big problem for the country. If only 10% are renting or looking I can’t imagine that would have much of an impact on prices with demand being so low. Business investment is a problem for sure
It’s not that I didn’t think anyone had the means, but that there would be a lower percent than they have due to wealth inequality. And yes, we are a product of our environment, and much of the western media covers the bad behavior of oligarchs. I don’t routinely get exposed to contemporary slice of life vignettes of other countries.
Lastly, when you try and shame others for showing that they learn, challenge the internal biases that we all have, and change their own opinions, you only serve to show others the calcified state of your own perceptions.
I was surprised as well. It would be worth confirming the dates from a second source, but there are some ready possible explanations for it as well. It could show a large number of multigenerational households. It could relate to the distribution of the population in high and low cost areas (rural vs urban likely). So it does seem high, but not impossible.
Another large factor is that it was communism up until relatively recently. Meaning wealth was largely evenly distributed outside the very top of the party. Not that people were well off, but far more equal than we are in the west. And while the oligarchs have an extremely outsized percentage of all Russian wealth buying real estate would make little sense in Russia, that would 1) put their position in Russia in danger by painting a target on them 2) a horrible hedge given Russia isn’t the most stable economy. In total I think 90% sounds extremely reasonable. Though the average house standard is of course far lower than say Germany.
That seems reasonable. I also think it stems from my idea of ownership being a standalone house, and didn’t include things like owned apartments, flats, condos, etc that would make up a large state of ownership in big cities.
Everything was owned by the state during Soviet times. Then the people got the chance to privatise their homes for pennies. Now everyone is an owner. That happened to all countries which were a part of USSR, not just Russia. Renting is a very weird concept over there. You only rent if: you travel a lot for work, you’re a poor student in a different city and your uni didn’t provide accommodation, or you’re an alcoholic who lost their home.
I was wondering the same thing for Germany, our population is stagnating, but apparently we need 400,000 new apartments per year (according to our government). Maybe because there are more divorces and singles nowadays who want to live alone?
Germany’s population has actually increased by almost four million in the past ten years, so that number of new apartments seems pretty reasonable at the moment. There will always be some homes that need replaced each year too, if they become unsuitable for living or are converted to non-residential purposes
You are right, maybe the y-axis of the diagram I remember was scaled for a larger range and it looked like it was stagnating, but with those numbers it really seems reasonable.
The numbers for Germany do often look weird after reuinification. In 2011 Germany realised it actually had 1.5 million fewer people than it thought it did. It hadn’t actually done a full census since reunification, and over 24 years in the west and 30 years in the east plus the difficulty of combining the two sets of records, errors built up
Hold on, 90%? I guess that would include the whole family in the home as the home owners, because otherwise that is an insane amount of single occupant dwellings.
It’s complicated by the fact a lot of flats were privatized after the fall of USSR. It’s like a boomer situation in the US. Many still live in what their parents claimed.
I wasn’t talking about variable rate loans. I mean by the time you started the process of getting the loan there’d be one interest rate and one expected repayment amount; and by the time you got to signing and locking in the rate it would probably have gone up by about a point and half at that rate.
Oh yeah for sure. Gotcha. Yeah I bought a house a year ago, and the rate was 5.5% when I started looking. Went up to 6% by the time I found the house and locked it in. That half percent actually represented a lot of money.
Holy crap, 7.5% in (basically) 1 quarter. Imagine trying to buy a house and having your loan repayment amount jumping faster than you can get paperwork filed.
So your comment made me go “lol, imagine buying a house in Russia.” Meaning my preconceptions were that most in Russia didn’t have the means to own a home.
But then I’m like, I don’t actually know that, let’s check it out.
According to this site home ownership in Russia is over 90%. So what you outlined is a real problem for people there, and changes some of my mental picture of Russian life.
The more you know!
If home ownership is 90% that doesn’t sound like a big problem for the country. If only 10% are renting or looking I can’t imagine that would have much of an impact on prices with demand being so low. Business investment is a problem for sure
People have children and need to get a bigger place. Or their children grow up and move out, so they downsize.
Higher interest rates keep people in places that don’t fit them because it’s more expensive to change.
This number aligns with my personal experience
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It’s not that I didn’t think anyone had the means, but that there would be a lower percent than they have due to wealth inequality. And yes, we are a product of our environment, and much of the western media covers the bad behavior of oligarchs. I don’t routinely get exposed to contemporary slice of life vignettes of other countries.
Lastly, when you try and shame others for showing that they learn, challenge the internal biases that we all have, and change their own opinions, you only serve to show others the calcified state of your own perceptions.
90% sounds really high? At least compared to the states where it seems a vast majority is renting??
No idea the data on this, just going off my anecdotal experience.
I was surprised as well. It would be worth confirming the dates from a second source, but there are some ready possible explanations for it as well. It could show a large number of multigenerational households. It could relate to the distribution of the population in high and low cost areas (rural vs urban likely). So it does seem high, but not impossible.
Cheers!
Another large factor is that it was communism up until relatively recently. Meaning wealth was largely evenly distributed outside the very top of the party. Not that people were well off, but far more equal than we are in the west. And while the oligarchs have an extremely outsized percentage of all Russian wealth buying real estate would make little sense in Russia, that would 1) put their position in Russia in danger by painting a target on them 2) a horrible hedge given Russia isn’t the most stable economy. In total I think 90% sounds extremely reasonable. Though the average house standard is of course far lower than say Germany.
That seems reasonable. I also think it stems from my idea of ownership being a standalone house, and didn’t include things like owned apartments, flats, condos, etc that would make up a large state of ownership in big cities.
deleted by creator
Everything was owned by the state during Soviet times. Then the people got the chance to privatise their homes for pennies. Now everyone is an owner. That happened to all countries which were a part of USSR, not just Russia. Renting is a very weird concept over there. You only rent if: you travel a lot for work, you’re a poor student in a different city and your uni didn’t provide accommodation, or you’re an alcoholic who lost their home.
Source: born and raised in USSR.
90% own houses, but evidently a much lower percentage also own a washing machine, judging from the souvenirs the conscripts have been bringing home
🤦🏻♂️
I suppose 30 years of mostly declining population has probably significantly reduced the pressure on the housing supply
I still have question how even stagnated population would even pressure housing supply at all.
I was wondering the same thing for Germany, our population is stagnating, but apparently we need 400,000 new apartments per year (according to our government). Maybe because there are more divorces and singles nowadays who want to live alone?
deleted by creator
Germany’s population has actually increased by almost four million in the past ten years, so that number of new apartments seems pretty reasonable at the moment. There will always be some homes that need replaced each year too, if they become unsuitable for living or are converted to non-residential purposes
You are right, maybe the y-axis of the diagram I remember was scaled for a larger range and it looked like it was stagnating, but with those numbers it really seems reasonable.
The numbers for Germany do often look weird after reuinification. In 2011 Germany realised it actually had 1.5 million fewer people than it thought it did. It hadn’t actually done a full census since reunification, and over 24 years in the west and 30 years in the east plus the difficulty of combining the two sets of records, errors built up
Hold on, 90%? I guess that would include the whole family in the home as the home owners, because otherwise that is an insane amount of single occupant dwellings.
It’s complicated by the fact a lot of flats were privatized after the fall of USSR. It’s like a boomer situation in the US. Many still live in what their parents claimed.
I mean you would be really dumb for having a variable rate loan.
I wasn’t talking about variable rate loans. I mean by the time you started the process of getting the loan there’d be one interest rate and one expected repayment amount; and by the time you got to signing and locking in the rate it would probably have gone up by about a point and half at that rate.
Oh yeah for sure. Gotcha. Yeah I bought a house a year ago, and the rate was 5.5% when I started looking. Went up to 6% by the time I found the house and locked it in. That half percent actually represented a lot of money.
American moment