A meeting of an interdepartmental committee devoted to the Affordable and Comfortable Housing to Russian Citizens program took place in the Plenipotentiary Representation of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District on March 29, 2007.


According to the statistics provided, the region’s dwellers were mostly buying one- and two-room apartments throughout 2006, with the average apartment area coming to something between 48 and 53 square meters. The dramatic increase in prices prevented the housing from becoming more affordable: the Russian average reached the point of 32,900 RUR per square meter of dwelling in December 2006, which was 32.7% higher than in January 2006. At the same time, the price of a square meter of dwelling soared between 1.5 times in Kurgan and 3 times in Yekaterinburg (namely, more than 60,000 RUR). A year later, prices went down a little bit due to quite a few houses being put up, so the Russian average was 30,240 RUR in January 2007.


The Ural banks provided their customers with 20.1 billion RUR worth of mortgages, or 39,411 loans altogether, which is 2.3 times better that the target figures proposed by the regional ministries. 11.7 billion RUR worth of mortgages was provided in 2005, reports the spokesperson for Plenipotentiary Representation of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District.