The Far East settles in service housing

The Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East has developed a project for the development of a system of state rental housing in the Far East – it is assumed that Dom.RF will do this for 50 billion rubles, issued to it from the National Welfare Fund in the form of a long-term (for 20 years) and de facto free (0.1% per annum) loan. The purchased real estate “Dom.RF” will be able to lease to the regions of the Far Eastern Federal District, and they will sublease to employees who need to be attracted by the macroregion. The project fits in with the Far Eastern Quarter program: it simplifies construction in exchange for selling part of the housing to the authorities at preferential prices – and can guarantee demand for developers by solving the problem of placing specialists in the Far Eastern ASEZs who are not ready to buy their own housing there.

The draft government decree, developed by the Ministry for the Development of the Far East, was published yesterday on regulation.gov.ru – it refers to the need to “stimulate the development of the residential rental market in the Far Eastern Federal District” and paragraph 4 of the list of presidential instructions dated October 19 No. Pr-1991 (the instructions are formalized according to results of the Eastern Economic Forum) — according to the plans of the ministry, this should allow providing “about 10 thousand families” with housing rented from the state.

Recall that the WEF announced the extension of the Far Eastern mortgage program at a rate of 2% until 2030. At the same time, to solve the problem of housing shortages, the construction of rental housing was also promised at a rate subsidized from the budget (see Kommersant of September 7).

According to the project of the Far Eastern Ministry, Dom.RF will receive 50 billion rubles. NWF funds under loan agreements with the Ministry of Finance until the end of 2023. At the same time, the loan will be targeted – for the purchase of “residential premises in the primary and secondary housing markets” located in the regions of the Far East Federal District, as well as furniture, household equipment and auxiliary premises. As an option, it is allowed to purchase shares of a closed-end mutual investment fund, whose assets include such real estate objects and the trust management of which is carried out by a management company accountable to Dom.RF. It will be possible to dispose of such real estate by renting it exclusively to a regional operator created by a constituent entity of the Russian Federation, followed by the provision of housing “? for sublease to individuals belonging to certain categories” (the choice of the Far Eastern regions can be young professionals, students, etc.). ). The sublease will be preferential – lost income is supposed to be compensated by subsidies “at the expense of the federal and regional budgets.”

It is not yet known how much public rental housing will cost to end users – de facto it will depend on the readiness of specific regions of the Far East and departments whose core projects are being implemented in the Far Eastern Federal District to subsidize rates – “the need to allocate budgetary allocations from the federal budget to compensate for the lost income of Dom.RF JSC will be determined during the preparation of a draft resolution establishing the procedure for providing appropriate subsidies, ”the Ministry for the Development of the Far East notes in an explanatory note. We note, however, that a cursory study of the rental market in Far Eastern cities demonstrates an extremely narrow supply of rental housing – and, most likely, state rental will be extremely relevant primarily for specialists who are not yet ready for a full-scale move to the Far Eastern Federal District, but are in demand in corporate investment projects implemented in district territory.

The return of the NWF funds and interest on them is supposed to be carried out 20 years after receiving each new tranche – in the current configuration of the Dom.RF project, it will pay off the fund by the end of 2043. Since the plans to purchase real estate for state lease involve the purchase of only ready-made housing, the supply of which in the FEFD market in such a volume (10 thousand apartments), most likely, simply does not exist, the project, obviously, is largely designed to stimulate developers to increase supply – in the macroregion, Let us remind you that the Far Eastern Quarter program is in effect (see Kommersant of January 22), which makes it possible to significantly speed up the implementation of housing projects in the ASEZ, provided that part of such housing is sold to the regions at non-market prices. The need to wait for the completion of such construction projects probably explains both the extended term for attracting loans and the clause on the possibility of Dom.RF to place temporarily free funds of NWF loans on deposits, directing the income received to purchase real estate or “compensation for operating expenses”.

Oleg Sapozhkov