SKB-Bank keeps helping members of housing cooperatives get mortgage loans. On October 26, 2007 SKB-Bank and Olips, one of Yekaterinburg’s major developers, signed a cooperation agreement that provides for mortgages to members of Sozvezdiye housing cooperative, the bank’s press officer says. This means the bank offers them a loan so that the members can pay for their co-op share that will later give them a right to an apartment in three out of eight blocks within the Sozvezdiye complex. The first apartment block has already been put up and will soon be commissioned. SKB-Bank offers its customers several loan schemes, including the one that does not require any collateral at the construction stage.

'We’ve gained a lot of experience working with the developers who construct dwellings for housing cooperatives, so all the business ties and the mechanisms have been made and worked through. Doing business with housing cooperatives expands our share of the market and gives their members a chance to take part in the federal mortgage program,’ SKB-Bank’s Mortgage Lending Director Anna Samuilova notes.

The first installment has to come to something between 10% and 60% of the total cost of a dwelling, the interest rates start from 15.5% a year at the construction stage and come to 10.75% to 14% a year (depending on the size of the first installment) after the building has been commissioned.