In June, mortgage sales in Russia increased by almost 1.5 times. The surge in demand is associated with the completion of a massive preferential mortgage and the previous conditions under the family program — borrowers were in a hurry to apply for a loan according to the old rules, VTB explained. However, in July, demand will cool down in the market, the bank predicts
By the end of June, mortgage issuance in Russia may amount to 780 billion rubles, an increase of more than 45% by May and almost a quarter by June 2023. This assessment is contained in a press release from VTB Bank.
Experts explain the June surge in demand by the completion of a massive preferential mortgage and the previous conditions under the family program — borrowers were in a hurry to apply for a loan according to the old rules. “We felt a special excitement last week. The sharply increased demand for popular government programs led to an almost 50% increase in sales by last year,” said Sergey Babin, head of the VTB Mortgage Lending Department.
From the second half of the year, the mortgage market will cool down, VTB predicts. The bank’s analysts expect the largest reduction in sales in July-August: by about a quarter by June. And this is after the issuance has increased by an average of 3% month-on-month in the last 15 years, they pointed out. In addition to the completion of universal state support, the dynamics of demand will be influenced by high rates on ordinary mortgages and the tightened risk policy of the Central Bank. We expect that by the end of the year, market sales will decrease by about a third compared to last year and amount to about 5.3–5.4 trillion rubles,” Sergey Babin said.
According to VTB, in general, according to the results of the first half of 2024, Russians took more than 2.8 trillion rubles to buy housing. This is only 8% less than in the same period of 2023. Banks conducted the majority of transactions on preferential terms. The average loan amount in January — June amounted to about 3.8 million rubles, which is half a million less than a year ago. The bank’s analysts explained the decrease in the mortgage receipt by reducing the maximum amount of loans under the state support program 2020 for Moscow, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Leningrad regions to 6 million rubles.
The program of preferential mortgages for new buildings at 8% (“State Support 2020”), which was launched as an anti-crisis measure in 2020, ended on July 1, 2024. Over the entire period of its operation, over 1.5 million loans were issued in the amount of about 6 trillion rubles, RBC-Real Estate told Dom.RF. According to the estimates of the Institute of Housing Development, as of June 2024, inclusive, about 84 million square meters of housing were purchased under the preferential mortgage program. The top regions in terms of the number and volume of preferential mortgage loans issued included Moscow, the Moscow Region, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar Territory, and the Tyumen Region.
English 
Russian 
German 
Polish