Russian millionaires are returning to the United States property market, lured by distressed sales and the ruble’s rise against the dollar, lawyer Edward Mermelstein said.

“The way many look at the United States right now is that it’s a bargain,” said Mermelstein, who has arranged about 300 real estate deals for buyers from the former Soviet Union since 2007.

Manhattan apartment prices dropped for the first time since 2002 in the second quarter as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings and Bear Stearns caught up to property owners in the United States’ most expensive urban market.

The ruble has rallied about 13 percent against the dollar from this year’s low in February.

Mermelstein, 41, closed two purchases and bid for 20 more residential and commercial properties in New York and Miami for Russian and central Asian clients in the past three months, he said. That compares with no deals or offers in January, he said.

U.S. sellers are cutting prices 30 percent to 40 percent from their peak in 2007, Mermelstein said in an interview in Moscow, where his firm has an office.

“All of a sudden in the last three months activity’s picked up,” he said.

More than half of the 15 or so Russians he is helping find U.S. property are new clients, he said.

Higher oil prices have helped real estate buyers attain “a little bit of a comfort level,” Mermelstein said.

Oil has averaged $60.14 per barrel since April, rising to above $72 per barrel last month. Last year’s plunging commodity and equity markets wiped out $380 billion from the collective net worth of the country’s wealthiest individuals, Forbes said.

Mermelstein said he closed deals for $1 million and $3.8 million properties last month in New York and has bids for commercial real estate for $25 million to $50 million in the New York and New Jersey. He declined to name the clients.

“In the next six months to a year we’ll definitely see some high-profile transactions in terms of number and in terms of trophy assets,” Mermelstein said.

Mermelstein founded his firm in 1995 and worked as a real estate broker in college. His first Russian client led to a joint venture on New York and Moscow commercial real estate. His company now focuses on Eastern European clients seeking to invest in the U.S.

The increase in Russian interest in U.S. property mirrors what’s happening in other countries. In London, luxury-home prices advanced in June for the first time in more than a year as Russia and Italian buyers took advantage of the pound’s weakness, London-based broker Knight Frank said last month.

Many Russians considering buying are influenced by celebrities and financiers, including Chelsea FC ­soccer club billionaire Roman Abramovich and telecommunications billionaire Mikhail Fridman, Mermelstein said.

“It’s a great marketing tool,” he said. “Russians are very much of a pack-mentality.”

Not everybody is ready to jump in. Metals and banking magnate Mikhail Prokhorov, 43, Russia’s richest man with $9.5 billion, isn’t interested.

“Why do I need a house an eight-hour difference away?” Prokhorov said. “I spend 90 percent of my time here and it makes no sense to have a private home so far away.”