‘The mortgage lending market tends to be experiencing lowering demand, mainly due to sky-high prices,’ Anna Troyanovskaya, Existing Homes and Mortgage Director of Vostochnoye Real Estate Ltd., said to UrBC.

Sverdlovsk Region’s banks provided their clients with 1,161 mortgage loans (which is 3.25 times better than in 2005) worth 1.068 billion RUR (five times better than in 2005) in January-June 2006. Only 52 mortgages were issued last January, whereas as many as 361 (worth nearly 355 million RUR) were issued in June 2006. As regards the period of January to October 2006, the local banks gave their customers 2.871 billion RUR worth of mortgages, which is 5.7 times better than in January-October 2005.

‘Banks are starting to invest in vigorous advertising campaigns and development of new and more flexible mortgage lending schemes. Each scheme is quite unique, which is why the realtors should help their customers choose the best products available on the marker, the principal criteria being the bank’s requirements for collateral and a low interest rate,’ Ms Troyanovskaya says.

‘We are trying to cover as many mortgage schemes as we can, and we are interested in all the market players; there are some banks, however, that we have no agreements with. This is true of UralFinPromBank, since it doesn’t seem to be interested in attracting a wide audience,’ she said.