Participants of the "Foreign Real Estate Showroom" told ee24.com, what they expect from the Russians and the Ukrainians in this season, how European markets will change after the Crimea joined to Russia and why clients count every ruble now.
In St. Petersburg opened three-day "Real Estate Fair", one of the largest and oldest exhibitions, presenting urban and suburban property and also foreign real estate. This year in St. Petersburg came up companies from more than 15 countries, mostly European.

The ee24.com is the official exhibition online partner. Our experts made presentation "Does the crisis disturb Russians?" about countries were Russians want to move and why they were looking for property at ee24.com in the midst of the Christmas holidays.
While future clients were listening to the speeches and choosing houses and apartments, our journalists communicated with foreign markets professionals who participated in "Foreign Real Estate Showroom" (part of the exhibition, dedicated to the foreign housing). For many companies it’s not the first time when they willingly come to Russia not only to find buyers, but also intend to tell as much as possible about their country in order to dispel common illusions.

However on the contrary the majority of clients became more responsible in choosing real estate. They learn in advance information about the cities and resorts and its property prices, make visits at the country of their future residence and come to the agency with detailed requests. According to Natalia Lazenkova, General Director at EHR Serveis Immobiliaris (Spain, Catalonia), this trend appeared about two years ago. People do not just come asking to "advise place for good purchase" but they have a clear idea of what they want. Igor Zhukov, Director of the group of companies "Montenegro Territory", said that real estate acquisitions in Montenegro became "adequate and carefully considered": Russians began to count the money and stopped silly waste them.

Igor Zhukov (on the right)
Exhibitors say that Russian interest in European real estate remains the same or even increases. Anna Kuberskaya, representative of construction company Art Home (Montenegro), is even a little surprised that despite to expectations, the strengthening of the euro has not affected the demand. Igor Zhukov said that neither currencies, nor conflict in Crimea are not able to demolish the interest to Montenegro and Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are coming here as they used to.
Xenia Balashova, Sales Manager in Spainway, as if to answer the question form ee24.com report said that "Russians don’t care about the crisis!" and lately the demand for real estate in Spain even slightly increased. Andrei Neznaev, Project Manager at DomSuomi, confirms that "good wave" became in Finland too.

Xenia Balashova
Aristo Developers, the largest Cyprus private developer, visited the exhibition. Pambos Charalambous, Head of Aristo Developers in Russia, notes that there was a significant requests growth in first quarter. Pambos said that Limassol is already developed and the developer’s interest is now focused on Paphos, where it is still possible to buy a property two times cheaper than in Limassol. Polis also will be actively developed in the near future.
Finally, everyone we spoke with is sure that real estate in their regions will not become cheaper. For example, Spain has either reached the bottom, or is closed to reach it. In Barcelona profitable objects are slowly rising in price. More sustainable growth, according to Natalia Lazenkova, may begin in the fall of 2014. It doesn’t pay to cancel the purchase, especially if you know exactly what, where and why you want to buy.

Pambos Charalambous
In Montenegro, as Anna Kuberskaya says, prices surely will not decrease due to the developed tourism and infrastructure. Profitable objects in Latvia also won’t fall in price. Andrejs Kozels, Director of housing department at Pindi Realia, says that his country was one of the first to overcome the crisis and prices continue increasing. It is difficult to find a good object cheaper than €50 000 in the center of Riga and in Jurmala (ie, being part of permit issue programm), and may be soon this amount won’t be enough, as parliamentarians intend to raise the "golden visa" bar up to €250,000, as it is in Greece.
In general, exhibitors are quite positive and optimistic and estimate Russian market as a promising one due to the interest in foreign real estate and prices that will reach after growing demand.
Text: Alexander Fetyukov, ee24.com