Russia's second city reveals its full potential for overseas property sales
The most important overseas property exhibition in Russia's second largest city took place last weekend. St. Petersburg boasts a population of 4.8 million inhabitants has become the new star on the overseas property show circuit with many international developers returning, keen to seek new leads and meet potential buyers. They were not disappointed as more than 6,500 streamed through the doors for the two-day event.Naturally, as the main media sponsor, International Residence, Russia's leading overseas property magazine was again out in force with a large stand, copies of their last issue and a team to survey the wishes of overseas property buyers in St. Petersburg.
The market in St. Petersburg has matured extremely fast and is now on a level with Moscow. However, due to the location in northern Russia, potential buyers are showing interest in different destinations and the survey in St. Petersburg was designed to explore the differences between Russia's leading cities.
— 66% implied that their primary interest was for private residential real estate abroad, only 5% indicated an interest in overseas commercial property. A further 29% were undecided and indicated that they were looking for the best returns.
— those interviewed stated that their investment would be less that ?100,000, a strong 35% stated that they were considering purchases between ?100,000 to ?250,000, while 25% were looking at between ?250,000 to ˆ500,000 and 8% between ?500,000 to ?1 million. Values of over ?1 million were of interest to 1% of those polled.
— 51% in St. Petersburg stated that they could be interested in taking a mortgage for their overseas investment. 31% have no interest in a mortgage however 18% indicated that they would be interested in repayment by up to 4 installments. Most preferred the possibility of mortgages through foreign banks.
— Questioned on which countries were of most interest to them for overseas property investment, the results were: Spain 18%, Bulgaria 16%, Montenegro, 11%, Finland 11%, Italy 8%, Turkey 7%, Cyprus 6%, Dominican Republic 6%, Germany 5%, France 5%, Greece 4%, Norway/Sweden 2%. Also of interest were Thailand, Latvia, Egypt, Costa Rica, Panama, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Canada, Croatia and Australia.
"Reading the results of our surveys enables us to understand the different mentalities in these cities and to be able to assist our advertisers accordingly" — stated Nataly Kovaleva from International Residence Magazine. "We are now preparing for the last events of this season, the Global Edge Russian Summit and the Moscow International Property Show in central Moscow in November. We will continue to interview the visitors and will present our final statistics at the end of the year".
For further information visit aigroup.ru
Press Contact:
Kim Waddoup, CEO aigroup
Email: kim@aigroup.ru
About aigroup:
Russia's aigroup offers full services for overseas property developers and agents to promote themselves directly to Russian buyers. With nearly 20 years of experience in the industry, aigroup is highly qualified to offer effective marketing solutions in order to penetrate the growing group of Russian buyers.
In 2003, aigroup launched the Moscow International Property Shows and in 2004 launched the magazine International Residence. The group now spearheads eight overseas property shows in Russia, and in addition, has also created Russia's leading luxury real estate portal www.1-property.ru. Its new shows include the Moscow International Property Shows, the Moscow International Investment Shows, the St. Petersburg International Property Shows and the Bulgarian Home exhibition.