Developments of Russian mortgage and housing markets

The article is devoted to the role of the state in the housing market in Russia. The main role of the Government is to develop a sustainable and efficient housing market and to ensure the access of households to affordable decent housing. To achieve this goal by developing mortgage market the Government established in 1997 special agency - The Agency for Housing Mortgage Lending. The main objective of the Agency is to implement governmental programs for providing affordable housing and ensuring improvement of housing conditions for the population in compliance with the priority national project Affordable and Comfortable Housing for Russian Citizens. The goal of the Agency for Housing Mortgage Lending is to establish conditions so that all Russian citizens had equal opportunities for getting a mortgage loan, regardless of their social status, education, family composition, income, occupation, religion, place of residence or registration. A residential mortgage loan provided in accordance with AHML’s standards is available for all categories of people, is good value for money and easy to arrange. AHML pays particular attention to fostering the mortgage market in the regions where the level of per capita income is lower than the national average, and the housing and financial markets are underdeveloped. The main goals, tasks, principles of activities will be outlined in the article. We will provide a brief history of mortgage lending sector in Russia and investigate the role of AHML in development of mortgage market. In addition we will look at the connections between housing and mortgage markets outlining the effects of changes in legislation and the strategy of development of mortgage lending in Russia, including AHML Group Strategy. Finally, we will describe the current approaches to construction of house price indexes and analyze its main drawbacks.