The Property Market in 2010

Throughout the final months of 2009 everyone involved in Moscow residential real estate was occupied with the search for the ‘bottom’ of the market. While buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants haggled away at compromises, consultants and journalists wrote, it seems, endlessly of when prices and rates might stabilize or even begin to rise again. In many sectors of the city’s property market this appears to have happened — though quite when remains a point of debate.

Despite this positive end to last year, all is by no means rosy. Focus is now likely to turn to a number of issues: the speed and rate of price rises, the level of ‘postponed demand’ and how this will influence the market, the longer-term effect of construction freezes on the supply of housing, and the rebalance of rental and sale properties. For the first issue of the year, REC asked a range of experts working in varying sectors of the property market for their views on what the year ahead might hold.

The year of the buyer, it appears, is over — although chances may remain for Russians interested in foreign real estate investment to acquire a bargain-price property. Meanwhile on the rental markets, landlords will be toughening their negotiating positions. With provisos of general macroeconomic stability, cautious optimism is perhaps the best overall description of the views offered.

Source: www.themoscowtimes.com