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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.
Global Real Estate Project
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Russian Market Recovers On Multi-lane Highway
Recent market statistics show a somewhat rosy picture of stabilization around or a little below the pre-crisis levels in some very important regions such as Moscow, but many other regions still lack momentum to fully recover from the emergency of 1998 that put the whole country on the edge of financial bankruptcy. Let's look at the most important sub-market in real estate matters in Russia - Moscow. Prices in the capital city began to decrease even before the crisis, during the 1997. Since they have fallen from an average of $1000 per sq.meter (1 sq.meter is approximately 10 sq.feet) to $600 per sq.meter and again have gone up reaching recently $1000. Of course, $1000 from 2002 aren't $1000 from 1997 thanks to the US currency annual inflation but anyway we can say that the market in Moscow has reached its pre-crisis levels denominated in US dollars. Some other also very important markets such as St-Petersburg (second largest city) and Yekaterinburg have reached around 80-85 percent of their pre-crisis price levels. That isn't very good news for the Russian president Vladimir Putin who doesn't miss any occasion to express his preferences for Petersburg. There are many cities where the market isn't going very well and they still can't push up from the bottom where they found themselves 4 years ago. These are many of the regional capitals and administrative centers such as Kaliningrad - the main city of the enclave situated between Poland and Lithuania*. Why the Russian market recovered from the crisis? The Russian experts say that the main reason are the higher oil and gas prices on the international markets that brought the financial stabilization and thus brought more money into the Russian economy. The others point out that the policy of warming up the relations between the Russia and the West has already brought its first fruits - more trade, more investments (in some sectors) and thus more demand on the real estate market. The investors' expectations of booming real estate market have further increased the attractiveness of this kind of portfolio. An opinion poll among the population of Moscow has showed that the real estate investment is still considered to be the safest. What to expect in the near future from this highly unpredictable Russian market? According to different analysts on the ground we can expect various scenarios. The first is that the price increases will continue for Moscow and for other major cities. The second is that the increase will embrace even the markets that still haven't performed well. The third (most original scenario) is that Moscow will experience a price decrease while bad-performers like Kaliningrad will catch-up with their pre-crisis levels.
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See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Russia.
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