SMO and the “low season”: the demand for rental apartments in Russian cities is falling sharply

Leonid Zlotin

After the announcement on September 21 of a partial mobilization in Russia, rental rates in Moscow and St. Petersburg collapsed almost instantly. A large decline was also recorded in the resort towns of the Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory. Weather and partial mobilization are to blame for the record decline, according to experts from the federal real estate database Restate.ru.

According to them, over the past five weeks since the announcement of partial mobilization, the weighted average rental rate in Moscow has fallen immediately by 20% and is now less than 72 thousand rubles a month - while previously it reached almost 87 thousand.

Studios set an anti-record this fall - the rental rate for them dropped by 22%, from 67 to 55 thousand rubles a month, and three-room apartments - from 125 to 111 thousand rubles a month, or minus 12%. One- and two-room apartments lost about 4%. It should be noted that quite expensive and large-sized apartments with free planning in the central districts are usually referred to as studios in the capital - hence such a high average price tag.

In St. Petersburg, rental rates have fallen by 8.5% since the announcement of partial mobilization, to 40,000 rubles on average. And here the decisive contribution was made by "three rubles", which fell in price by 10% (66 thousand rubles a month instead of 73 thousand), while the rates for "odnushki" remained approximately at the same level.

Probably, this trend can be explained by the fact that many family tenants who moved abroad left the two capitals over the past month. Another option is the departure of only men and the refusal of the remaining family members from renting large-sized apartments in favor of less spacious ones, in order to optimize costs.

Of other Russian cities with a population of more than 1 million people, the cost of rent in Krasnoyarsk has significantly decreased - minus 7.5%. Now the average rate is 27.9 thousand rubles. For this money, you can rent a spacious one-room apartment in a good area or a compact two-room apartment.

Rates in Kazan also fell by 4.5%, however, in real terms, this is less than one and a half thousand rubles a month. And up to 3% in Perm is only 700 rubles. Such a decrease can hardly be called noticeable for the market. In Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Ufa, Omsk and Voronezh, prices have not changed in any way since the end of September.

But in Rostov-on-Don, the rental price increased immediately by 9.5%. In addition, a noticeable increase was recorded in Krasnodar - by 6.5% at once - up to 18.3 thousand rubles per month (the cost of renting a one-room apartment, if not in the center, but in a location with developed infrastructure).

Slightly less - by 3-3.5% - increased rates in Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk and Volgograd.

We add that the cost of rent in the most popular resort cities of the country has strongly sank. For example, in Sochi it dropped from 64,000 to 55,000 rubles a month in five weeks. However, it should be noted here that this process has been going on since the beginning of August. Over the past three months, renting a house here has become on average 20,000 rubles cheaper.

Here, of course, not only partial mobilization plays a role, but also the end of the holiday season. Thus, in Anapa the rates decreased by 5%, in Yalta - by 8.5%, and in Sevastopol - by 10%. It is obvious that the cost of rent in seaside cities will continue to decline in the future - the "low season" is already in full swing here.