By Andrei Skvarsky.
The returns of a 2018/2019 survey by Moscow-headquartered real estate broker Tranio suggest that commercial investment was the purpose of the majority of those years’ property purchases abroad by nationals of Russia and Russian speakers living elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Independent States.
About 70 per cent of real estate purchases by Russian speakers in Germany and about 65 per cent of those in Thailand were commercial projects. So were more than half of acquisitions in the Czech Republic and Austria, according to a report from Tranio.
France was an exception with commercial investment as the aim of only 11 per cent of properties bought by Russian speakers, the rest being housing intended for personal use.
Russian-speaking investors normally chose capitals or just large cities to make their purchases. Three resort areas were notable exceptions – the French Riviera, the Halkidiki peninsula in Greece and Costa Blanca in Spain.
Value-added projects – development or redevelopment – were yet another purpose of purchases, but this category accounted for only 17 per cent of all acquisitions by Russian speakers.
Micro-apartments were the most popular investment property types among Russian speakers. Apartment buildings were second. Hotels of 80 or more rooms were a lot less in demand, and cafes, restaurants and office space even less so.
Some of the transactions were never completed, the main reason being the buyers had excessive expectations of yields, according to the survey.
The average transaction among Russian speakers was worth about 1m euros ($1.1m).
Tranio questioned 686 individuals – real estate agents, brokers and developers working with Russian speakers – in 38 countries in what was its eighth annual survey analysing the real estate purchasing patterns of Russians and CIS nationals.
The returns suggest that Russian-speaking real estate investors were showing relatively low and declining global activity, being gradually ousted by Asians, primarily Chinese, and that some of the Russian speakers were seeking to sell their foreign properties.
There were comparatively few Russian-speaking real estate investors in Britain, the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, France and Germany in 2018 and 2019, though Russian speakers made up the majority, or one of the largest groups, of buyers in Cyprus, Montenegro and Greece.
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