Russia · RUS · snapshot 2026-08-16
The market we can see best is the one to trust least
Reviewed
Currency movement
Not measured
The European Central Bank has published no rouble reference rate since March 2022, so the series every other currency row on this site is built from does not exist here. That is a fact about this market, not a gap in this pipeline. The World Bank does carry an annual average rate, but the most recent one is for 2024 — a two-year-old annual figure cannot answer a twelve-month question, and printing it beside monthly reference rates would make two incomparable things look like one.
Foreign-buyer rules
2 of 2 published rules apply
These are the restrictions a foreign buyer meets before price is even discussed — approval regimes, surcharges, ownership limits.
What it does not show. It is not a completeness claim. A rule we have not read is not a rule that does not exist, and this row counts what is cited, not what is in force.
Cost of money
14%
The price of money to banks in this jurisdiction, which sets the floor everything else is priced from.
What it does not show. It is emphatically not a mortgage quote. What a non-resident is offered is a different number, usually much higher, and the gap between them is where a market's financing story actually lives.
Supply against absorption
Not measured
No national statistical series for completions against absorption has been read for Russia. The listing counts below are not a substitute and are not counted as one.
Residential price cycle
219.6 against a 2015 base of 100
House prices have risen faster than consumer prices since 2015 — the market is above its own inflation-adjusted level of that year.
What it does not show. It is a position, not a direction, and it is not a valuation. Deflating by consumer prices says nothing about what the asset yields or what credit costs, and a market can sit above its 2015 level for years without that meaning anything is due.
Valuation against its own history
Not measured
The OECD house-price dataset does not carry this territory, so there is no ratio to state. The dataset covers its members and a set of partner economies, and most of the world is in neither.
On the market now
5,472 commercial listings across 7 cities
How much commercial property one platform is showing for sale in these cities, at the minute it was read.
What it does not show. It is not the supply of those markets and cannot be read as one. The platform's coverage is uneven between cities and moves as its business moves, so a rise can mean more inventory or more sales effort — from outside, the two are indistinguishable. It is also a point reading with no period behind it, so it compares to nothing yet.
Thesis
Russia is the only market on this screen where the publisher holds primary data of his own: sdelio.ru is the founder's other company and can be read directly rather than through a statistical agency. At the moment of reading it was showing 5,472 commercial properties for sale across 7 cities, the largest single count being Saint Petersburg at 1,665. What this market is actually measured on, though, is three layers that are not ours: the Bank of Russia's policy rate, 14.00% for July 2026 on the BIS series; the OECD real house-price index, 219.6 for 2025 Q4 against Russia's own 2015 base of 100; and cited statutes — foreign persons cannot own land plots in border territories, and the list of those territories moved as recently as July 2026.
Counter-thesis
Everything that makes this market legible also makes it the easiest to flatter, and the reader should discount it accordingly. A listing count from the publisher's own platform is a related-party figure: it measures what one company has on its website, which moves with that company's sales effort as much as with the market, and no outside reader can separate the two. It is published as evidence and carries no coverage — this market's position rests on a central-bank series, an OECD real-price observation, and statutes, none of which we produce. The second discount is harder to argue away: the currency layer that every other page here leans on does not exist for Russia at all; the OECD archive supplies real prices, but no price-to-income or price-to-rent reading; and the friction layer has two verified rules plus one pending rule rather than a survey. A market this visible with this little independent measurement is exactly the shape a reader should be suspicious of. And the third discount belongs to this page itself: the named approver below is the same person who owns the platform the listing count comes from. Everywhere else on this screen the approver is independent of the sources; here he is not, and that is a fact about this page rather than a footnote to it.
The series behind those figures, and the workings
Cost of money
14%
Central bank policy rate, 2026-07. Source: Bank for International Settlements.
This is the price of money to banks, not the price of money to a non-resident buying a building. The gap between those two is where a market’s financing story actually lives, and it is not in this number. A mortgage quote for a foreign buyer depends on the lender, the asset and the borrower, and no public dataset carries it.
BIS terms permit this figure on a free page and state that nothing in their statistics constitutes investment advice. They also allow inclusion in a commercial product only where it adds no charge, so this series is published here and is not priced into any paid work.
Background
Annual national statistics from the World Bank, under a licence that permits reuse with attribution. They describe the country; they do not time an entry, and they are not counted as measurements of this market — otherwise every territory on earth would claim to be measured on the strength of one dataset.
| Indicator | Value | Year |
|---|---|---|
| GDP per capita | 17,547 US$ | 2025 |
| Consumer price inflation | 8.7 % | 2025 |
| Population | 143,513,328 | 2025 |
| Urban population | 75.3 % of total | 2025 |
| Official exchange rate | 92.5524 per US$ | 2024 |
What the rules do to a foreign buyer
Each entry cites the instrument and the authority page it was read from, with the date it was retrieved. Facts of law change; the retrieval date is how you know how old this reading is.
| Topic | In force | When it bites | Applies to | What applies | Instrument | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Land ownership in border territories | In forceNot stated by the source | On the way in | All property | Foreign citizens, stateless persons and foreign legal entities may not hold ownership of land plots located in border territories. The prohibition attaches to the land plot itself, whatever stands on it, and the list of territories is set by presidential decree rather than by the Land Code — so where this bites is changed by decree, most recently in July 2026. It is not a general bar on foreigners owning Russian real estate, which is the usual misreading, and it is one rule rather than a survey. | Земельный кодекс РФ, ст. 15 п. 3 — Land Code of the Russian Federation, article 15(3). The list of territories is set by Указ Президента РФ от 09.01.2011 № 26, as amended on 27.07.2026 by Указ № 521. Retrieved from ConsultantPlus, a commercial legal database rather than the official gazette: pravo.gov.ru refused the connection on the day of retrieval, and the article is cited precisely enough to be checked against the official text anywhere. | 2026-08-11 |
| Agricultural land, and the fifty-per-cent rule behind it | In forceNot stated by the source | On the way in | Land only | Foreign citizens, foreign legal entities, stateless persons — and Russian legal entities in whose charter capital such persons hold more than 50 per cent — may hold agricultural land only on a lease. Not restricted: prohibited from owning it at all, whatever the price. The capital threshold is the part worth reading twice, because it reaches through the structure normally used to get around a nationality test: a company registered in Russia is caught if the foreign share passes half, so ownership is decided by who owns the owner rather than by where the owner is registered. This governs land classified as agricultural and says nothing about an apartment or an office, which is the distinction most often lost when the rule is quoted. | Федеральный закон от 24.07.2002 № 101-ФЗ «Об обороте земель сельскохозяйственного назначения», статья 3 — Federal Law 101-FZ, article 3, in the edition of 29.12.2025 with amendments in force from 01.03.2026. Read from ConsultantPlus, a commercial legal database rather than the official gazette: pravo.gov.ru refused the connection again on the day of retrieval, as it did for the Land Code, and the article is cited precisely enough to be checked against the official text anywhere. | 2026-08-12 |
Rules we know of and have not established
These are not entries in the ledger above and carry no coverage. Each names a rule that bears on a foreign purchase here and says what has not been settled about it. Treat this page as silent on them — not as saying they do not apply.
Permission regime for buyers from states designated unfriendly — not established
Since 2022 a separate permission regime has applied to real-estate transactions involving persons from states Russia designates unfriendly, and for many foreign buyers it — not the border-territory rule above — is what decides whether a purchase completes. Its current scope is not stated here because it could not be established from a source worth citing: the official portal refused retrieval on the day this was attempted, and the secondary summary available got the decree's own date wrong in the same paragraph in which it described the amendments. What is corroborated is only the instrument's number and date, by the identifier of its official publication. What it requires today, who it exempts, and what has been carved out of it since are all unestablished.
What is missing, and why
currency — Source does not cover this market
The dataset simply does not include this territory. Absent, not zero.
The European Central Bank has published no rouble reference rate since March 2022, so the series every other currency row on this site is built from does not exist here. That is a fact about this market, not a gap in this pipeline. The World Bank does carry an annual average rate, but the most recent one is for 2024 — a two-year-old annual figure cannot answer a twelve-month question, and printing it beside monthly reference rates would make two incomparable things look like one.
supply — Source does not cover this market
The dataset simply does not include this territory. Absent, not zero.
No national statistical series for completions against absorption has been read for Russia. The listing counts below are not a substitute and are not counted as one.
What supports this, what would make it wrong, and how it could go
What supports this
- Bank of Russia policy rate 14.00% for July 2026, from the BIS central-bank policy rate series — the same source used for every other market on this screen.
- Земельный кодекс РФ ст. 15 п. 3 prohibits ownership of land plots in border territories by foreign citizens, stateless persons and foreign legal entities; the list is set by Указ № 26 of 09.01.2011 and was last amended on 27.07.2026. Retrieved 2026-08-11.
- OECD's latest published Russian real house-price index is 219.6 for 2025 Q4 against its own 2015 base of 100. It is a price-against-inflation series, not a price-to-income or price-to-rent measure.
- 5,472 commercial listings offered for sale across 7 cities at 2026-08-16: Saint Petersburg 1,665, Krasnodar 849, Rostov-on-Don 836, Yekaterinburg 822, Novosibirsk 808, Moscow region 264, Sochi 228. A point reading with no period behind it — the endpoint carries no date of its own, so the moment of the fetch is the observation time, and the page publishes one reading rather than a series. Three readings now exist five days apart: 5,822, then 5,664, then 5,472. A total falling steadily while individual cities move in both directions is exactly the movement the grant warns cannot be read as supply, because a platform's count moves with its business as readily as with the market's.
What would make this wrong
- The platform changes its coverage — adds a city, drops a category, runs a campaign — and the count moves for reasons that have nothing to do with the market. Nothing here would detect that from outside, which is why the count carries no weight in the coverage.
- The border-territory list is amended again, as it was in July 2026, and a plot that was purchasable becomes one that is not. The rule is stable; the map of where it applies is not.
- A reader treats the listing count as market supply. It is not, the grant that permits publishing it says it is not, and the row itself says it is not.
Outcome branches
- A reader wants a number for Russian commercial inventory and takes this oneThey have a count of one platform's listings, which is a real observation about a real platform and not a measurement of the market. Used as the former it is useful; used as the latter it is wrong by an unknown margin.
- A foreign buyer looks at a property near a border and assumes the building is the whole questionThe building may be purchasable while the land under it is not, because the prohibition attaches to the plot. That distinction is the difference between a completed transaction and a refused registration.
- The current scope and amendments of the permission regime for buyers from states designated unfriendly are read from an authoritative sourceThe pending entry rule can become a cited constraint with its actual exemptions and transaction conditions, rather than leaving a broad, fast-changing regime behind an instrument number alone.
Record
| Why this market is on the list | Here because this is the one market where the operator holds primary data of his own — sdelio.ru is the other company of the same founder, and its commercial listing counts are published under a recorded inter-company grant. That makes it the market most at risk of being flattered, so it is written to a stricter standard than the rest of this screen rather than a looser one: the listings carry no coverage, and the three layers this market is measured on come from a central-bank series, a published OECD valuation observation, and statutes, none of them ours. |
|---|---|
| Dossier | Approved by IP Krasikov Aleksandr Olegovich (founder, and owner of the platform this page's listing count comes from) on 2026-08-11 |
| Next review | 2026-11-11 |
| Evidence snapshot | 2026-08-16 |