‘With the exception of Academic district, not a single housing construction project has been started in Yekaterinburg this year. This is also true of business centers, and, to be frank, I don’t think the building outputs will go back to ante-recession level or even keep up with this year’s figures,’ Chairman of Aston Construction Company Vyacheslav Trapeznikov said at a round table discussion coordinated by Ural Real Estate Chamber.

‘Most housing developers are now busy finishing their earlier projects. We ‘forced’ the banks to offer us additional loans to complete the construction of buildings that had been 70% ready. The construction of buildings that were less than 70% ready had to be frozen, and there is very little chance it will be resumed any time soon. For one, Aston used to perform 150 million RUR worth of construction-assembly work every month but now we only do 25 million RUR worth of these jobs,’ he explained.

‘What is more, our company still has to pay off a loan. We actually paid the price of a full-scale fifteen-storey apartment building in terms of interest last year. In fact, we have been living under an uncontrollable economic downfall over the last eighteen months, but this downfall appears to have stopped now,’ Trapeznikov observed.