Suburban real estate and low-rise buildings are in favor: what's happening in the residential real estate market
Kyiv • UNN
The war and power outages have shifted demand in the real estate market towards low-rise apartments up to the 9th floor and country houses with gas heating. Buyers prefer properties with bomb shelters and autonomous energy sources.
The war and related problems with electricity supply have made adjustments to the demand for housing in the capital's real estate market. As experts told UNN in a commentary , buyers are not interested in view apartments as they used to be.
Today, apartments up to the 9th floor, no higher, are in greater demand. This is due to the war and power outages. While it is still possible to go up to the 9th floor, it is already a problem to go up to the 20th or 25th floor. And electricity is cut off in different areas, and there are areas where electricity is cut off for 4 hours a day. So this is a problem. In high-rise buildings, the problem is that they are exclusively electrified and have no gas. Accordingly, if the electricity is cut off, cooking is a problem. Therefore, houses with gas are in greater demand
Of course, buying an apartment depends on the neighborhood, the infrastructure, and the availability of the metro. Larysa Stavinoga, a real estate expert, added that buyers are also interested in the presence of a bomb shelter, and people prefer suburban real estate because it usually has its own boilers to provide heat.
"And you can put batteries there and somehow provide yourself with autonomous power consumption. They also prefer renovated apartments to move in and live without having to make repairs," Stavinoga added.
As for the demand for apartments, Nesin notes that it is not the demand itself that has decreased, but the activity of buyers.
The primary market is having a very difficult time today. There are many factors that affect it, and the main factor is the war, the lack of labor, the lack of electricity and other things due to the war. What happened was that people who invested in real estate before the war froze their construction projects and now some companies are starting to restore them very slowly. But very, very slowly and very, very few companies have the financial resources and are ready to finish the construction at their own expense. Because the dollar exchange rate has changed, they all buy materials for foreign currency. Everything is related to the dollar, and the cost of these materials has increased significantly
She added that the cost per square meter has increased significantly compared to what it was before the war.
"This difference has to be covered by something, and not all developers can do it. And there will be a 100% situation when, if a person has invested 100%, he or she will probably not pay anything extra. And those people who have invested a certain percentage, or have taken out an installment plan, or on other terms, should understand that they are likely to be recalculated and the value of their real estate will increase significantly. That is, they will have to pay extra," Stavinoga added.
The expert emphasized that people have no money because they have no jobs, so people will put these properties up for sale en masse, but there are problems here too.
"The so-called assignment. Due to the fact that the law "On Protection of Investors' Rights" came into force in October 2022, the procedure for assignment of rights has changed. In this regard, many developers were unable to comply with the terms of this law in order to correctly submit information to a special section in the Register of Property Rights on unfinished construction. And such an object cannot be bought. In fact, it exists, it is unfinished, people want to sell it, but there is no mechanism, because the developer has not fulfilled the terms of this law. According to the law, the developer must hand over to the registrar the full scope of construction permits that he received when the law came into force. What was it like before? You signed a lease agreement and started building. And then, in the process, they begin to develop the project, start doing something, and gradually they begin to conclude other permits. But now it's not possible, now you have to do all the documentation, submit it to the registrar, and then start construction," the expert says.
According to her, today companies that have their own financial resources survive, and social housing usually survives due to its relative cheapness.
As for the secondary market, all these events that are happening in our country are bad for the real estate market because it is very intuitive. It is highly dependent on the opinions of third parties, on the opinions of owners, on the opinions of buyers. And this is already affected by information factors. In addition to power outages, currency fluctuations, military actions affecting cities, information factors also have a great impact. There is no demand for luxury housing in new buildings and in the secondary market in general. Today, the economy segment market
She also said that apartment owners do not inflate their prices when selling them, because there is no such demand in the market as there was before.
"Now it (the secondary market - ed.) is 'rolling back', prices are sinking. June is always a bit weak, and we'll see what happens next. The situation at the front is not improving either. It used to be like this: you sold and bought. Now they have sold and are keeping the money, waiting," the expert said, adding that buyer behavior has changed a lot.
