Anatoly Popov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank, said at a conference for developers “Time for Change: New Challenges and Development Prospects in the Industry” that last year a quarter of residential construction projects in Russia were implemented ahead of schedule. Despite sanctions, price hikes and supply chain disruptions, 60 percent of homes were built on schedule and only 15 percent of projects fell behind schedule.
The sustainability of the construction sector is ensured by the financing reform initiated five years ago. It was decided to put an end to joint constructions at the expense of buyers, which led to a large number of deceived stockholders. Under the new program, financing for developers is through escrow accounts, which allow you to keep buyers’ money intact until the home is delivered. Housing construction is carried out with the help of project finance from banks.
Anatoly Popov noted that according to the old joint housing construction plan, banks do not actually finance the developers, their share in the portfolio of Sberbank is only two percent. Now it has risen to 16.7 percent: if in general bank developers financed 3.2 trillion rubles, then 2.8 trillion rubles are projects financed under the new project financing scheme using escrow accounts. According to Popov, all capital construction projects will be completed by the end of this year.
“We see that project funding makes it possible to build on time,” Popov said. To him, last year was a year of restrictions, of breaking logistics chains, and it looked like we should see a slowdown in construction speed, but that didn’t happen. Developers started working faster, the industry got faster, which is very valuable because buyers get the homes they expect faster, says Sberbank vice chairman of the board.
Popov described the most important success of the financing reform in the construction sector as the increase in the transparency of the sector and the increase in the level of confidence of home buyers in contractors. According to him, in order to maintain the pace of construction, it is now important to find targeted solutions that can support the industry at a time when demand is declining, in regions where margins are lower or costs are higher or purchasing power is high. less than.