In May, housing construction, according to Rosstat, continued to grow — the commissioning of houses increased by 31.3% in annual terms, amounting to 5 million square meters. On the one hand, this is due to the effect of a low base — in May 2020, housing construction sank by almost 18% (a larger failure was recorded only in April — 33.4%). On the other hand, the achieved indicator also exceeds the May values before the coronacrisis (in 2019, the most successful year for housing construction, 4.6 million square meters were commissioned in May).In general, 28.8 million square meters were commissioned in January—May. m of housing, which is 28.4% more than a year earlier. In the total mass of the introduced housing, most of the houses are built by citizens — 56.6%, or 16.3 million square meters. Thus, private housing construction “played” the fall of 2020 (11.5 million square meters were introduced then). m versus 13 million sq. m. m for January—May 2019), largely related to the suspension of real estate registration. In general, the share of residential buildings built by the population has been growing since 2017. Among the recent support factors is the “Rural Mortgage” program at 3% per annum, as well as the next extension of the dacha “amnesty” in December 2020.The commissioning of multi-apartment housing also exceeded pre-crisis values (12.5 million sq. m. m in January-May against 10.7 million sq. m. m a year earlier and 11.2 million sq. m. m in 2019). The authorities attributed the growth in the construction of industrial housing to the existing support programs — subsidizing the costs of developers for the creation of infrastructure, as well as preferential mortgages at 6.5%, which spurred the pace of launching new projects. So, in May, the increase was 26% compared to last year’s figure, in just five months, the construction of 14.9 million square meters was launched. the cost of housing is 78% more than in the same period last year. Based on such dynamics, the government expects that the annual housing commissioning will reach 85 million square meters.Sentiment in the industry as a whole continues to improve — the business confidence index in the construction sector in the second quarter (according to the survey results in mid-May) was minus 12%, an increase of 3 percentage points compared to the one recorded in the previous quarter, which was estimated by experts as one of the best values for the pre-crisis 2018-2019 years.Yevgenia Kryuchkova
