UrBC, Moscow, November 5, 2019. The average monthly rent you have to pay for a home in Russia’s large cities rose by 27% in the course of the year, Izvestia refers to Avito Nedvizhimost as stating.

In Russia on the whole, rental prices went up by about 13% between October 2018 and October 2019 and now come to RUB 23,000 a month on average.

The price increase was much more pronounced in cities with population over 1m people. Rents increased by 27% on average (up to RUB 37,000 a month) in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, and Omsk. The rental prices of studio apartments rose by 8% (up to RUB 20,000 a month), those of one-bedroom homes by 21% (up to RUB 31,000 a month), and those of two-bedroom ones by 40% (up to RUB 62,000 a month).

Avito Nedvizhimost analysts explain the rents went up after the price of new and existing homes rose due to housing developers switching to the escrow-based financing options.

As buying a place of your own has turned into a more expensive project, people have to postpone home ownership in favor of long-term rentals, they say.