Real estate market monitoring. December 2011

The monitoring presents the development results of the residential and commercial real estate markets ofMoscowand the Moscow Region in December 2011.

During the last month the primary elite residential market ofMoscowenlarged with apartments in SMOLENSKIY DE LUXE RC. The number of real buyers increased in the market, and the average prices for elite residential space increased both in the primary and in the secondary elite residential markets. 

December 2011 turned out to be a successful ending of the year for the office real estate market both in terms of the volume of concluded deals and in terms of the announced by developers’ plans for 2012. The aggregate volume of lease transactions concluded in December 2011 exceeded 45 thous.sq.m. The largest deal not only in December, but also for the whole 2011, was the deal of Mail.Ru Group company rent of one ofSkyLightBCtowers (rented area is 29.9 thous.sq.m.).

In December 2011, developers announced the plans on the construction of 240 thous.sq.m. of office areas. Three business centers, the developer of which is AFI Development, are singled out among the announced projects. The largest one of them is MFC inGruzinskiy Val streetwith the total area of 108 thous.sq.m. The implementation of the projects became possible after the provision of the developer with three land plots as the compensation for the prohibition of construction of a retail center under Tverskaya Zastava square. 

December became the month of summation in the hotel market ofMoscow: the properties, the opening of which was expected during 2011, were commissioned, a number of new projects under international operators’ management in regional cities were announced. A landmark event of the end of the year was the transaction on the purchase of the National hotel.

The landmark events of December in the professional retail real estate market ofMoscowinclude the opening of Aventura retail-entertainment center, as well as the opening of DIY-hypermarket of Finnish chain K-Rauta, which had been presented only in North-West district before. December did not bring any tangible dynamics in the rental rates of the street retail segment in theMoscowmarket: the indices settled at the level reached in H2 2011. 

Despite the seasonal decrease of buyers’ activity in the pre-New Year period, in December 2011, the sales were opened in several cottage settlements in the countryside residential real estate market, three of which offered townhouses for sale. Thus, Masshtab GC delivered a new settlement in the Kaluzhskoe highway within the framework of A101 project development – Kronburg quarter of townhouses, which is located within12 kmfrom MKAD near Potapovo microdistrict.

The price situation in the countryside residential real estate market remained rather stable during the whole 2011. Minor growth of supply prices for countryside properties was recorded in the projects at the high readiness stage: the sale prices in the newly delivered projects were still lower than the pre-crisis ones in all the segments. At the same time special promotion actions and discounts were available in many settlements.