According to the data of the National Credit Ratings (NKR) agency, in 2021 the volume of mortgages issued reached a new record, reaching almost 5.7 trillion rubles (4.4 trillion rubles a year earlier). The average mortgage loan tenure was almost 21 years — this is the highest ever.
Mortgage debt is also growing — in December 2021, the total debt of Russiansamounted 11.4 trillion rubles(last year — 9.27 trillion rubles). This is about half of the total credit debt of Russian individuals, which, according to the latest data, amounted to more than 24 trillion rubles. The largest amounts of mortgage debt are in Moscow (1.59 trillion rubles) and the Moscow Region (0.99 trillion rubles). Moscow and the Moscow Region are also leaders in overdue debt (9.4 and 6.1 billion, respectively).
NKR analysts named two reasons for the record demand for mortgage loans — preferential programs and reduced rates. After the revision of concessional lending programs to a less favorable side in the summer of 2021, the market “cooled”: in the second half of the year, the share of mortgages with state support fell below 10%, while in the first half of the year it averaged 27%.
Conditions of «preferential mortgages» were significantly tightened: in the spring of 2020, Putin instructed to reduce the rate to 6.5% per annum and increase the maximum loan amount to 8 million rubles in Moscow and St. Petersburg, up to 3 million rubles in the regions.
In July 2021, favorable conditions ended: the base rate was raised to 7%, and the maximum loan amount was limited to 3 million rubles for all regions.
Nevertheless, the average size mortgages increased by 25% in 2021.
“The lending volumes increased this year due to the growth of the average check and the number of loans. At the beginning of the year, the average mortgage loan amounted to 2.65 million rubles, in September it exceeded 3 million rubles for the first time, and in October it reached 3.1 million rubles,” the agency’s report says. Since 2019, the average amount of a mortgage transaction has grown by more than 40%, and the term — by more than 20%.
Real estate prices have also risen — by an average of 20% per year. The cost of a square meter in a new economy class building in Moscow increased by 30% (in the elite segment — by 43%), and in New Moscow a square meter of housing rose by 18%. At a press conference in December, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that «cheap mortgages make [housing] more expensive, but the positive effect is clear.» However, back in April, the president called the rise in housing prices “not just growth” and instructed the FAS to check the rise in real estate prices: “I won’t explain, you yourself know everything, but in the European part it’s thirty, twenty!”
In addition, from January 2022, the law on increasing the cadastral value of real estate came into force. It will amount to 181 thousand rubles per square meter (previously — 149 thousand rubles), which is an increase of 21.4%. Experts attributed this rise in prices to the rapid rise in housing prices in recent years, and also noted that a sharp “jump” will affect the burden on taxpayers, which may increase proportionally.