RUSSIA: BUYING A HOME IN THE CAPITAL IS A COMPLICATED PROCESS скачать в хорошем качестве

RUSSIA: BUYING A HOME IN THE CAPITAL IS A COMPLICATED PROCESS

(17 Oct 1997) Russian/Eng/Nat In Soviet times Muscovites waited years for an apartment. Now Russians can buy almost any kind of home - that is if they have the money. With housing still partially controlled by the government, real estate prices are expensive and quality poor. Lena Gresenko is doing something that just five years ago was illegal - she is buying an apartment. True she will not own a private home but just a leasehold, yet for most Russians that is a big improvement. For more than fifty years there has been a shortage of living space in Moscow. The Soviets built acres of low quality housing blocks, creating ghetto-like suburbs in and around the capital. But families still waited years for even the smallest and simplest of living quarters. When Soviet planning ended prices in the real estate market went through the roof and the Moscow city government couldn't build fast enough to satisfy demand. And even with the hundreds of thousands of new apartment blocks being built, obtaining a home in Russia is still a complicated process. SOUNDBITE: (Russian) "There is so much risk in buying an apartment and I am very, very afraid of the whole process so I went to an official real estate firm so that every thing would be on the up and up and guaranteed. You get a receipt and the apartment is paid for through the bank, a real agreement is signed, and I have legal help. But of course I would never have risked doing this on my own." SUPER CAPTION: Lena Gresenko, Apartment buyer Buying an apartment in Russia however is not easy. The majority must be paid for in cash and with no functioning legal system the potential buyer faces a myriad of problems. And if that wasn't enough, much of the (m) millions of square metres of apartment space built by the Moscow city government has been constructed in outlying regions that lack infrastructure and transportation. Tens of thousands of Moscow suburban apartments were sold with promises of a new metro stop, but subway construction has been at a standstill for over a year. And the Moscow city government is still building (m) millions of square metres of apartment space. This despite a recent real estate crash. Now the city is sitting on a multimillion-dollar stock of unsaleable flats, because most Russians don't have the cash to buy the over-priced poor-quality dwellings. SOUNDBITE: (English) "There is something like about 15-thousand flats, newly constructed are not occupied yet and the Moscow government to support the effective demand of the population, to try to sell these houses now it has to use different ways." SUPER CAPTION: Nadezhda Kosereva, Housing expert And Russia is still new to the idea of credit. There are only a handful of banks that offer housing loans and with interest rates at more than 30 percent only Russia's wealthy can yet afford to buy a home on credit. But, it's not just high interest rates that discourage Russians from taking out a home loan. In a society that is used to upheavals and financial instability, the population is still uncomfortable with investing in their future. SOUNDBITE: (Russian) "In Russia there is not the kind of mass habit of buying things on credit. Here people have always been uncertain of their future so to take a loan for the future was unthinkable. You could take a loan and then you would have nothing tomorrow." SUPER CAPTION: Andrei Podkolzin, General Director of Universial Financial Company Economists predict that interest rates will fall as inflation is lowered. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...