Vitaly Mutko described the efforts of DOM.RF. Since 2000, housing construction has tripled – from 30 million to 93 million square metres last year. In the first eight months of this year, the company commissioned 70 million square metres of housing. The mortgage system was launched in 2000. Today, 14 million people have improved their housing conditions with mortgages.
DOM.RF is the operator for all subsidised mortgage programmes – the family and Fast Eastern mortgage plans, and the IT mortgage plan that was just launched. Mr Mutko emphasised that during the crisis – both last year and in April-May of this year – these programmes were the only support for the market. Today, subsidised state programmes constitute 35 percent of all mortgages. About 830,000 families have received mortgage loans at 7 percent and almost 2.6 trillion rubles has gone into construction.
The President emphasised that the Far Eastern mortgage plan was designed to encourage people to stay in the Far East, and most importantly, to move to this region and ensure migration growth.
Mr Mutko noted an important factor – many people will not apply for a mortgage even if the rate is very low because they still will not be able to service it. Therefore, DOM.RF has been developing a rental housing programme since 2016 at the President’s instruction. It already has 18 buildings in its portfolio with up to 600,000 square metres in seven regions. There are different types of rental housing – corporate rentals and residential rentals. DOM.RF has its first corporate rental properties with companies like SIBUR, Zvezda and Skolkovo. There is very little budget funding in it. Market money is invested, and leases are for 15 years. There are also projects for modern student housing.
Mr Mutko recalled that at the Far Eastern Forum the President talked about the need to initiate a rent-to-own housing construction programme that provides the opportunity for eventual purchase. Vitaly Mutko said the company is prepared to become the operator of this programme as a turnkey project, especially since such projects have already been launched on Sakhalin and in Magadan.
Mr Mutko said DOM.RF is also working with the regions. It has up to 400 different measures for supporting housing construction around the country. He also mentioned the company’s efforts to support banks, their liquidity; they have been doing this since 2016, issuing 1.5 trillion rubles worth of DOM.RF mortgage bonds. In effect, today these bonds guarantee every tenth mortgage in the country.
Mr Mutko noted that the President had set a serious goal: 5 million families must have improved housing conditions before 2030. To achieve this it will be necessary to build 120 million square metres a year. So, DOM.RF has restructured its entire operations to achieve this goal.