Mortgage rates may fall below 10 percent - "Izvestiya"

UFA, 14 February 2017. /Bashinform News Agency, Galina Bakhshieva/. Mortgage rates may be reduced in the current year to 11 percent per annum, in 2018 – to 10 and below, regardless of the state support program completion. The statement announced by the Ministry of Construction, Housing and Utilities of the Russian Federation was checked by "Izvestiya". The rate on loans for the purchase of housing has never dropped to single digits, the newspaper notes. Starting from 40 percent per annum it dropped to 12 percent by 2007, and rose again in 2008 and 2014. Since March 2015, a two-year program of subsidizing interest rates started to operate in the country. Its completion will not lead to growth according to the Government: banks offer mortgages of 12 percent per annum on the background of market stabilization and low inflation. The specialists of banks interrogated by the newspaper generally agreed that growth would not be expected. And if it is possible to reduce inflation to four percent, the establishment of rates at the level of 7-8 percent is quite real within a year or two.

However, representatives of the construction industry are more pessimistic. They believe that tightening of banks strategies and fall in real incomes of population will not allow mortgage rates to decline.