The Bank of Russia, the country’s central bank, has now raised rates by 7.5 percentage points since July
Holy crap, 7.5% in (basically) 1 quarter. Imagine trying to buy a house and having your loan repayment amount jumping faster than you can get paperwork filed.
The Bank of Russia (back when things were so bad they had to halt their stock market) has also forbid people for using more than small amounts of foreign currency. I believe people are limited to the equivalent of 10,000 rubles, or $100 per week.
So your comment made me go “lol, imagine buying a house in Russia.” Meaning my preconceptions were that most in Russia didn’t have the means to own a home.
But then I’m like, I don’t actually know that, let’s check it out.
According to this site home ownership in Russia is over 90%. So what you outlined is a real problem for people there, and changes some of my mental picture of Russian life.
Everything was owned by the state during Soviet times. Then the people got the chance to privatise their homes for pennies. Now everyone is an owner. That happened to all countries which were a part of USSR, not just Russia. Renting is a very weird concept over there. You only rent if: you travel a lot for work, you’re a poor student in a different city and your uni didn’t provide accommodation, or you’re an alcoholic who lost their home.
I wasn’t talking about variable rate loans. I mean by the time you started the process of getting the loan there’d be one interest rate and one expected repayment amount; and by the time you got to signing and locking in the rate it would probably have gone up by about a point and half at that rate.
Oh yeah for sure. Gotcha. Yeah I bought a house a year ago, and the rate was 5.5% when I started looking. Went up to 6% by the time I found the house and locked it in. That half percent actually represented a lot of money.
Holy crap, 7.5% in (basically) 1 quarter. Imagine trying to buy a house and having your loan repayment amount jumping faster than you can get paperwork filed.
Offtopic (because it has nothing to do with Russia): in Argentina the inflation of the local currency this year reached at least 100% annual.
But people there use USD fiat for purchasing real estate. And use USD/EUR for saving.
So even if the local currency is a mess, people moves using foreign currency for important transactions.
The Bank of Russia (back when things were so bad they had to halt their stock market) has also forbid people for using more than small amounts of foreign currency. I believe people are limited to the equivalent of 10,000 rubles, or $100 per week.
American moment
So your comment made me go “lol, imagine buying a house in Russia.” Meaning my preconceptions were that most in Russia didn’t have the means to own a home.
But then I’m like, I don’t actually know that, let’s check it out.
According to this site home ownership in Russia is over 90%. So what you outlined is a real problem for people there, and changes some of my mental picture of Russian life.
The more you know!
90% sounds really high? At least compared to the states where it seems a vast majority is renting??
No idea the data on this, just going off my anecdotal experience.
90% own houses, but evidently a much lower percentage also own a washing machine, judging from the souvenirs the conscripts have been bringing home
🤦🏻♂️
Everything was owned by the state during Soviet times. Then the people got the chance to privatise their homes for pennies. Now everyone is an owner. That happened to all countries which were a part of USSR, not just Russia. Renting is a very weird concept over there. You only rent if: you travel a lot for work, you’re a poor student in a different city and your uni didn’t provide accommodation, or you’re an alcoholic who lost their home.
Source: born and raised in USSR.
I mean you would be really dumb for having a variable rate loan.
I wasn’t talking about variable rate loans. I mean by the time you started the process of getting the loan there’d be one interest rate and one expected repayment amount; and by the time you got to signing and locking in the rate it would probably have gone up by about a point and half at that rate.
Oh yeah for sure. Gotcha. Yeah I bought a house a year ago, and the rate was 5.5% when I started looking. Went up to 6% by the time I found the house and locked it in. That half percent actually represented a lot of money.