UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 23, 2015. The price of a square meter of an existing home has been dropping by 0.2% a week on Yekaterinburg housing market and came to 70,756 RUR this week (down 7.2% on the start of the year), Ural Real Estate Chamber reports.

‘This gradual downward trend has been there since February. Despite the dropping demand, home owners are unwilling to reduce their prices and so these have been declining only slowly. The market supply, on the other hand, is still at its all-time high: there are currently 11,400 apartments and 2,000 rooms in communal apartments in the chamber’s database alone. Very few sales actually go all the way through, so it takes between 4.5 to 6 months and more to make a sale,’ the chamber’s analysts say.

Prices have been dropping most noticeably in the city’s remotest (and cheapest) districts, by 2% in the last four weeks (51,622 RUR per m2 on average). Centrally located apartments grew 1.5% cheaper (97,644 RUR per m2), those in the second and third priciest districts grew 0.9% less expensive (75,234 RUR per m2 and 65,073 RUR per m2, respectively), and those in the fourth most expensive districts grew 1.3% less expensive (60,349 RUR per m2).