Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin announced to the local bankers that mortgages need to become more affordable. The executive said in the course of his visit to Kamensk-Uralskiy that he hoped to make the interest rate on mortgages drop to 11% a year.

The Governor feels the region’s banks should also decrease the down payment to 10% of the total loan sum. In fact, Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev has already promised to make the interest rates go down. The president declared the rates should come to 6% to 8% a year.

‘We’ll keep on gradually reducing the interest rates on mortgages; they are too high at the moment, so if we manage to go back to the ante-recession figures at least, this could already work. I believe 10.5% to 11% a year is already good enough for Russia, but most of the world feels the best rate is 6% to 8% a year,’ the President announced during his visit to Tomsk.