«The average price of one square meter of housing has been more or less stable since March 2007 and it now comes to round about 65,500 RUR», Ural Chamber of Real Estate CEO Rustem Galeev said to UrBC.

«Last year, the actual price of a transaction tended to be higher than the supply price, just because there were so many people willing to buy a home. The seller could afford to raise the price and even have an auction of some sort. Right now things have gone the other way around: a customer could easily get a 5% to 10% discount if they like», Mr. Galeev said.

«Things will probably stay like this for a while. All this talk of an upcoming downfall in prices never came true and probably never will. In the meantime, the market supply has already tripled but has by now stopped. As the market players are interested in selling, and the customers have been quite active, I’d say we should expect an ongoing rise in demand and a slow price growth. Yet prices will start going up next year», he added.