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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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A bank in Russia is ready to offer 50-year mortgage loans for buying residences to young people with significant incomes; the only fixed condition is that they should be no older than 30. No more than a couple of other banks in Russia may be lured to follow this move. The big problem in Russia, unlike some western countries where super-long mortgages have been in practice for some years now, is that the average life expectancy in this country is significantly lower; it's 65 for the general population regardless of gender, and just 59 for the men. Women, on the other hand, live in average 73 years in Russia. But even they, if the statistics are to be trusted, must be already dead by the expiry of the mortgage. Isn't it, therefore, more convenient just to rent instead of buying a residence?

Like in many other countries with people looking for better living conditions and financial system looking for more large pool of customers, Russia is no exception when it comes to providing mortgage loans for residential purposes. With the time passing, more and more Russians are using these options; the number of Russians seeing the bank as nothing more than a scheme for stealing money is constantly falling since the big financial crisis of 1998. The average mortgage loan in Russia now is approximately 20 years, which is fairly consistent with some other European countries, some of them with very long and undisturbed history of private ownership. A couple of banks in Russia are even providing longer loans; one of them has just started offering 50-year mortgages.

Super-long mortgages exist in other countries too. The only difference between Russia, and let's say, the United States, is the lack of clear mechanisms in Russia of making this loan contract go to the legal successors. In Russia, this lack of legal provisions may change, but nobody risks predicting if, when, and how exactly this will happen. Therefore, the super-long mortgages will remain for now the sole responsibility of those who sign the contracts. Here comes up the main problem with the super-long mortgages in Russia; the Russians just don't live for too long to see them paid up to the last payment. The Russians in average live for 65 years; the picture is a bit rosier for the ladies who have life expectancy for 73 years. Even having that all super-long mortgage customers in Russia would be females, they too won't be alive for the most part, unless they have signed the contract at the end of the high school.

Everybody signing a contract for a mortgage loan can make the math; any contract above 18-20 years leads to much higher payments over longer period. In the case with the 50-year loan in Russia, the calculations show that the residence will be paid off 6 times. Therefore, what's important to know for would-be buyers is to read the terms of accelerated repayment; the bank obviously doesn't expect its customers to live long enough and obviously doesn't want to enter in interminable legal battles with the customers' successors. The bank would, therefore, expect that the customers would try to make some accelerated plan of repayment; and here the clients should particularly pay attention against penalties of different kind.

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