Coldy Real Estate Digest for July 1 - 12

• Metropolitan authorities have started work on a new master plan of Moscow, specifying that its main objective will be a shift of focus on the creation of work places (and not necessarily in the form of factories and plants). The functioning of the territories based on computational economics should form the basis of the new main urban planning document of the capital;
• Experts from Nestpick online accommodation platform have ranked the world's best cities for remote working. To do so, they ranked 75 cities worldwide in three broad categories: cost of living and infrastructure, legislation and freedoms, livability. In addition, analysts took into account the proportion of vaccinated population in each of the cities analyzed, which is an indicator of the government's response to the ongoing health crisis;
• Moscow business class residential real estate market sets a new record in demand for the purchase of housing. In the first half of 2021 the volume of sold area in the business class amounted to almost 900 thousand square meters, which is twice as much as the results of the first half of 2020, and 70% higher than the results of the same period in 2019, according to Colliers press release;
• At the end of the second quarter of 2021 the weighted average offer price in old boundaries of Moscow has reached 405,6 thousand rubles/sq. m (taking into account the upscale segment), which is 11,5% higher than in the previous quarter and 31,6% higher than in the second quarter of 2020. Comfort class showed the highest price growth – more than 12% over the quarter, according to the Est-a-Tet report;
• Government approves decree on expansion of "Family Mortgage" program and extension of "Preferential Mortgage" program for one more year. The relevant decree is published on the website of the Cabinet of Ministers. It states that it will be possible to buy housing in a new-built housing development under "Preferential mortgage" program at a rate of up to 7% per annum starting July 2. Maximum mortgage loan amount for all regions will be 3 million rubles. The down payment, as before, should not be less than 15% of the value of the housing. The difference between the preferential rate and the market rate is reimbursed to banks by the government;
• Russia will monitor the causes of rising housing prices for each region, said Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Irina Yarovaya at a meeting of the Presidium of the Council of Legislators. “As for the monitoring, we are launching it right now in order to give instructions to the Federal Antimonopoly Service after the monitoring and come up with a proposal to make a more accurate assessment of price changes in the housing market”, Interfax quoted Yarovaya.

Read more about the above-mentioned events and other important real estate news in Coldy's Real Estate Digest magazine.