Preliminary results reveal that the number of new homes commissioned in 2016 decreased by around 3.4 percent year on year to 1.15 million, the second most substantial annual housing listing result ever recorded in Russia. The total floor space of residences listed in official records in 2016 contracted by 6.7 percent to 79.3 million sqm, which is the third highest figure ever recorded in Russia.
However, the results for housing space registration in Russia in recent years must be assessed cautiously, as it consists to an important extent of dwellings completed in the respective years, along with many residential properties completed a long time ago but listed in official records recently in accordance with Federal Law No. 93-FZ of 30 June 2006, which is commonly described as a “dacha amnesty”. In part, this law was intended to legalise the construction of houses built without the requesting of a building permit. The “dacha amnesty” was planned to end on 1 March 2015, and the public rushed to benefit from it in early 2015 in particular. Meanwhile, the deadline has been moved until March 2018.
It is thought that in 2016 about 219,300 detached houses were listed in official records in Russia based on the “dacha amnesty” edict. In the same time, Rosstat revealed that the floor space of self-build homes registered throughout the country in 2016 totalled 31.5 million sqm. Considering the size of garden houses (so-called dacha), it is obvious that the “dacha amnesty” decree had a substantial contribution on the Rosstat data tracking housing completion in Russia in 2016.
Regardless of the dubious result on the floor space of self-build homes listed in 2015 and 2016, registration of residences other than self-build homes was still remarkable in the last couple of years. In 2015, construction companies succeeded in placing on official records 5.1 percent more housing space than a year earlier, with more than 43 percent of the 2015 supply being activated in the last three months. Furthermore, irrespective of the lack of economic growth in Russia in 2015 and 2016, last year construction companies succeeded in placing on official records only 4.2 percent less housing space than in 2015.