UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 9, 2015. The average per-square-meter price of a new home comes to 62,800 RUR in Yekaterinburg at the moment, which is 2% less than a year earlier (64,100 RUR). Also, the average price of an apartment also decreased by 13% and currently comes to 3,233,000 RUR, a report by N1.RU and E1.Nedvizhimost states.

Prices went down because homes in new apartment buildings tend to be smaller: their area shrank from 60 m2 to 51 m2 on average in the last year. These are the two-bedroom apartments whose size changed the most, N1.RU reports: these grew, on average, 13% smaller (down from 89 m2 to 78 m2). Studio apartments grew 3% less big, one-bedroom ones 7% smaller.

These dropping prices affected market demand in that customers are now increasingly interested in one-bedroom apartments in new buildings: these amount to 37% of all customer viewings. The supply in this market segment, however, only grew very slightly this year: one-bedroom homes now only make up 34% of the estate agents’ database, so it turns out that there are more customers willing to buy one-bedroom apartments than there are such apartments for them to buy, a case unique to the current market. In the meantime, market competition is still at its fiercest in the studio apartments segment.

‘Given the rising construction costs and the customers’ declining paying capacity, developers have to build smaller dwellings in order to make them more affordable. The increase in demand for one-bedroom homes resulted from a decrease in demand for two-bedroom ones: customers prefer to get something smaller rather than save up for a bigger purchase,’ says Marina Grinemayer of E1.Nedvizhimost.