foreign companies sold real estate in the Russian Federation for 250 billion rubles in 2023 – Kommersant

Foreign companies sold Russian real estate for three quarters of 2023 for 249 billion rubles. These data follow from a report by the consulting company NF Group, which is available to “Vedomosti”.

This amount is almost six times more than was sold last year for the same period. Then foreign companies sold real estate for 31 billion rubles, noted IBC Real Estate General Director Alexey Efimov.

According to the report, one of the largest transactions of this year became Gazprombank’s purchase of 14 Mega shopping and entertainment centers from the Swedish company Ingka Centres. There was also completed purchase by the investment fund Balchug Capital of the Metropolis complex from Hines.

Thus, 62% of the indicated amount came from transactions from the sale of trading floors, another 17% from office premises. The amount from sales of warehouse premises amounted to 12%, and the rest came from real estate transactions for development and hotels.

However, foreign companies most likely received only half of the declared amount, consultants say. The final amount of transactions after its approval by the government commission, according to them, is halved.

According to Mr. Efimov’s forecast, which he shared at the Kommersant conference “August Brunch. Investments. Real Estate”, by the end of the year the total volume of investment transactions in real estate in Russia may reach 580–600 billion rubles, which will become an absolute record in the entire history of observations. He noted that one of the growth factors was the departure of foreign owners from Russia.

On March 1, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree according to which transactions for the sale of real estate between Russian residents and residents from “unfriendly” countries must be approved by a government commission. In March of this year, the Ministry of Finance proposed introducing fines for non-compliance with the decree.

Read more about transactions with foreign companies in the material “Transactions are looking for detours”.

Alexandra Goroshilova