'Russia’s regional office markets develop in a way that resembles that of Europe and Moscow a while ago, so I don’t think the emergence of any new trends is very likely,’ Alexander Kurochkin of Saint-Petersburg-based Management Companies and Commercial and Industrial Property Developers Guild announced at a recent press conference.

'My feeling is that the players need to interact very actively in order to understand the best way to move forward. One of the major issues, for example, is deciding on how to classify the office types. Some large Russian companies agreed upon a certain standard in November 2006,which meant some of the buildings and office spaces had to be re-classified. Yekaterinburg developers need to bear these standards in mind,’ Mr. Kurochkin said.

'Nowadays using foreign investments in commercial property projects is becoming more and more popular; there are, however, some domestic investors (mainly federal banks) who would quite like to take part in construction projects like these. Given that a 10,000-square-meter building costs $10,000 on average (with price per square meter coming to approximately $1,200 for class A and B offices), investors could provide 30% to 40% of the money needed, with the rest contributed by the banks,’ he observed.