Square meters of contention: how developers and officials will solve the problem in the housing market

At the end of last week, the Accounts Chamber proposed to exclude studios and 1-room apartments from all state-supported mortgage programs in order not to support the demand for uncomfortable housing typologies and not contribute to the growth in the supply of such apartments, Novostroy-M. Moscow and MO. New buildings" .

The idea of the Accounts Chamber was not supported by either the authorities or market participants: the Ministry of Construction said that such a restriction would create an additional barrier for people in need of better living conditions, and there should not be such a barrier. Vice Speaker of the Federation Council Nikolai Zhuravlev was even harsher, saying that the proposal was anti-social in nature.

In addition, developers interviewed by journalists also considered that the ban on the purchase of 1-room apartments with state-supported mortgages would deprive a huge number of potential buyers of the opportunity to improve their living conditions.

Journalist Pavel Pryanikov named the source of this problem. It turns out that two extremes of the housing market have collided on this issue, between which both sides will probably seek a compromise. Officials advocate that the apartments be as large as possible (so that the parameters of the national project for their region are fulfilled). Developers - for those types of apartments that sell best (and these are small):

“The idea of the Accounts Chamber is not documented, and this is not the body that the State Duma and the Federation Council listen to when drafting bills.

Nevertheless, there is a problem of an overabundance of small-sized apartments in new buildings. For example, in the Moscow region at the beginning of 2022, 1-room apartments and studios now account for 60-65% of all housing units. In Moscow - 56%. Moreover, the area of such small-sized spaces is shrinking. At the end of 2021, there was a decrease in the average area of Moscow studios in Moscow from 26.1 sq. m to 24.6 sq. m.

But there is a problem here. Officials should be guided by the established norms for the provision of housing under the national project "Housing". For them, this is an important KPI (key performance indicator), which is strictly asked from above. But with small-sized apartments, such a KPI cannot be achieved.

Here are some examples of such KPIs. In the Kursk region, one inhabitant of the region in 2030 should account for 37 square meters. m. Now this figure is 31 square meters. m. The national project "Housing and the urban environment" in the Nizhny Novgorod region - 29 sq.m of housing per person. Kaliningrad region - 30 sq.m.

Officially in Russia, “Social groups of the population with a dwelling area per person from 16 sq. m. up to 23 sq. m. are identified as provided with housing below the average level.

Therefore, in order to fulfill the national project “Housing” (its main criterion is the output of the construction complex by 120 million square meters of delivered housing per year), officials are interested in housing units (apartments and private houses) being as large as possible…”

For his part, the economist Dmitry Prokofiev provided an ideological basis for this problem:

What is important here? This is again the same idea of power - to make it possible to evaluate the quality of life of people and the results of their activities not "through money", but through "meters", "projects", "levels", "development rates", "improvement maps" and that's it.

This idea is very old - in the USSR, when people ask “where is the money?” and “why the deficit?” the authorities were very fond of answering something like “and-you-look-what-what-hockey-boxes-in the yards”! In fact, there were not so many of these “boxes”, it is now they have composed a fairy tale about the “free Soviet Union”, but the principle is important - a person asked about “personal”, and he was answered about “public”.

So it is now - a person does not want "meters", he wants to be able to live where there is work, prospects and money. But the government has other priorities. They are no better or worse than human priorities. Just different."