Moscow apartment prices rose from 135,000 rubles per square meter to 143,000 rubles over the past half year, according to market watcher IRN.ru, although used apartment prices in rubles are remaining practically unchanged.
Over the past half year, the average increase was no more than 1.5 to 2 percent, said Alexander Pynin, director of GdeEtotDom.ru. According to estimates by Peresvet-Invest, used housing even got cheaper by 2.8 percent.
In dollar terms, apartment prices increased 4.1 percent, with the price per square meter reaching $7,240, or 202,730 rubles, Peresvet-Invest said. Year on year, Moscow apartment prices went up 13.4 percent in dollars, 2.4 percent in rubles, market specialist Olga Markova said.
In the Moscow region, the secondary market price per square meter dropped 1.5 to 2 percent. In January, the price per square meter in Krasnogorsk, according to GdeEtotDom.ru, was 82,292 rubles; by the summer it had edged down to 81,096 rubles. In Balashikha over the half year, housing fell from 71,211 rubles to 67,752 rubles per square meter.
"This is because in the suburbs there is a large quantity of new projects," GdeEtotDom.ru said. While in the city used housing is of varying quality, in the suburbs it is mostly old homes that are unable to compete with new projects.
Just outside the city there are about 130 new residential buildings, IRN.ru said. The secondary and primary markets are currently neck and neck, with about 10,000 apartments sold each month on both markets, GdeEtotDom.ru said.
"In the region they're building so much you can't get rid of anything," Pypin said.
Moscow's secondary market is largely overshooting its primary market — 30,000 apartments versus 2,500. The real number of sales, according to Pynin, is about three to four times less than the number of offers.
