Preferential mortgage helps build housing in the Far East

"The growth rate of housing construction in the Far East is higher than the national average," Alexey Popov, head of Cian.Analytics, told RG. "If in the 2010s it accounted for 2.5-2.8 percent of all new buildings in Russia, then by 2024 the figure had grown to 3.4 percent. True, this is still less than the region's share of the country's population (approximately 5.5 percent)."

In 2024, 4.7 million square meters of housing were commissioned in the Far East – 4 percent more than the year before. In 2023, the growth was 25 percent. However, in the first months of this year, the rate of housing commissioning slowed. From January to May, according to Rosstat, 1.8 million square meters were built in the Far East – 5.8 percent less than in the same period last year.

As Vladimir Kaplinsky, vice president of the Russian Guild of Realtors and expert of the People's Front in Primorsky Krai, explained to RG, the reasons for the decline were overheating of prices against the backdrop of active demand, rising costs of building materials and logistics, the transition of individual housing construction to escrow accounts, and the low solvency of the population.

Today, the prospects for housing construction in the Far East cannot be called unequivocally optimistic, says Dmitry Zemlyansky, director of the research center for spatial analysis and regional diagnostics at the IPEI of the Presidential Academy. The fact is that cooling is also observed in this industry as a whole.

Demand for new housing is important for developers. And the state is trying to support it, including through preferential mortgages. The Far East currently has the most attractive preferential lending program in the country with a rate of up to two percent per annum, launched in December 2019. Since 2025, it has been called "Far Eastern and Arctic Mortgage". According to Rosreestr, as of July 18, 2025, more than 131 thousand housing loans were registered under this program. Far Eastern mortgages, provided for the purchase of apartments in new buildings, have become one of the factors in increasing the volume of new housing construction in previous years.

"Such stimulation of demand, of course, fueled the interest of developers. Since 2021-2022, this has been felt in the form of an increase in construction volumes, and now these facilities are being completed and provide current commissioning indicators," Sergey Kosikov, General Director of the City Real Estate Center, explained to RG.

According to him, today there is still demand for housing in the Far East, but it is not as feverish as in 2021-2023. "The buyer sees that there are a lot of properties, the Far Eastern mortgage will work until 2030, the apartments will not go anywhere, and you can wait a year or two to buy," explained Sergei Kosikov. "And there are a lot of properties on the market, and when calculated per developer, the existing demand is insufficient. In this regard, if earlier everyone wanted to sell 90 percent of apartments before commissioning, now the plans are 50-60 percent."

4.7 million square meters of housing were commissioned in the Far East in 2024

The Far Eastern Mortgage and Family Mortgage programs provide an influx of buyers, but require a restart, says Vladimir Kaplinsky. "It is important to support supply, not just demand," he is sure. "This means subsidizing engineering infrastructure, reducing developers' costs, especially in remote areas. Stimulating enterprises to build housing for workers, both in the format of investment agreements and through corporate mortgages. And also expanding the terms of the programs – removing the age limit for children in family mortgages, and leaving the requirements in the Far Eastern mortgage only to the borrower, eliminating dependence on the spouse."

As for the prices of new buildings, according to Vladimir Kaplinsky, in a number of regions of the Far Eastern Federal District they are 15-20 percent higher than those of secondary housing. Alexey Popov notes that high-quality new housing in the Far East has always been expensive. And although preferential mortgage programs have become an additional factor in the growth of prices, the rate of increase is at the level of the national average. "But the absolute price level is higher. A "square" in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Chita, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is more expensive than in almost any Russian city with a population of over a million, except for Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod," the expert said.

In addition to preferential mortgages, other housing construction support programs are in effect in the Far Eastern Federal District, for example, "Far Eastern Quarter". It operates within the boundaries of priority development areas (PDAs) in cities of regional significance. The first houses began to be built last year in Blagoveshchensk, Chita, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Korsakov in the Sakhalin Region.

In 2025, within the framework of this program, the new resident of the TOR "Buryatia" began construction of the microdistrict "Ulaan Khoto" in Ulan-Ude. In addition to 13 residential buildings, the construction of two kindergartens, a school, a clinic, and multi-level parking is planned there.

In total, the Far Eastern Quarter program plans to build about 1.8 million square meters of housing for more than 69 thousand Far Eastern residents.

"But for the program to have a real effect, it must be scalable, be present not only in large cities but also in small towns, be linked to the creation of scientific, technological and educational clusters, and also be supported by funds for roads, communications, healthcare, culture and sports," Vladimir Kaplinsky emphasized.

In the Far East, integrated territorial development projects (ITD) are also being implemented. In Vladivostok, for example, they will cover more than 77 hectares. In total, 88 territories with a total area of 1,336 hectares can potentially be used for IDT in the Far East. The projects allow breathing new life into previously unused or problematic areas where emergency and dilapidated housing is located.

"The programs for the integrated development of the territory are designed to lower the threshold for entry into new and complex markets for federal development companies. This task has been largely accomplished. Large developers from regions of European Russia are actively working in the region," noted Alexey Popov.

"But probably the most unusual and promising construction support program is "Affordable Rental Housing," says Dmitry Zemlyansky. "Here, regional specifics are taken into account, and regions can choose the categories of people to whom such housing will be provided. The scale is still small, but the potential is significant." Last year, 282 families moved in – mostly in-demand young specialists and SVO participants.

Verbatim

Vladimir Kaplinsky, Vice President of the Russian Guild of Realtors, expert of the People's Front in Primorsky Krai:

The key advantages of the Far Eastern Quarter program are its comprehensive approach: housing plus social facilities and improvements, as well as the involvement of large developers, transparency and predictability of the process.