Housing supply recovers faster than demand

In the third quarter, the housing market in apartment buildings recovered somewhat, follows from the Dom.RF review. In August and September, new projects of 3.7 million and 4.3 million square meters were launched. m, respectively, thus, for the first time since February, there was an increase in annual terms. In August – 22%, in September – 7%. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, in October, the pace of launching new projects slowed down again, to 3.4 million sq. m. m, lagging behind last year’s values ​​by 3%. Such fluctuations are associated with an increase in uncertainty regarding the demand for housing. It, in turn, was apparently caused by the delay in making a decision (until last week) on the future of preferential mortgages for new buildings (see Kommersant of December 15). According to Dom.RF, sales in the third quarter were mainly restored due to transactions under preferential mortgage programs.

In the third quarter, 117,000 equity participation agreements were concluded. This is 20% more than it was in the second quarter, but the sales rate still falls short of the level of 2021 (286,000 contracts). The rate of sale of new housing (the period for which it is sold) is also decreasing. As follows from the survey, this indicator rose to 1.7 years in the third quarter from 1.5 years in the previous quarter, when a return to the “normal level” was recorded. The volume of unsold housing is estimated at 65.4 million square meters. m as of the beginning of October – this is 9.4% more than it was at the beginning of July, and corresponds to the level of the end of 2019.

Taking into account these factors, even the reduced supply in the market of new buildings now exceeds demand – 8.3 million square meters were commissioned in the third quarter. m of housing in apartment buildings, which is 18% less than in the same period last year. The launch of new projects exceeded the volume of housing commissioning by 44%. Nevertheless, supply is recovering faster than demand, and Dom.RF analysts see the housing market balancing out, which leads to a slowdown in price growth in new buildings. According to Rosstat, in July-September, the growth in apartment prices in nominal terms amounted to 4.3% after 8% in January-March and 6.5% in April-June. In general, over the nine months of the year, the price increase was significant – 20%. According to Dom.RF, about 8 percentage points in this growth were made by “near-zero” mortgage programs from developers.

Evgenia Kryuchkova