How Vladimir Putin created a housing bubble
Prices have risen by 172% in Russia’s biggest cities over the past three years
Mortgages used to be a tough sell in Russia. Decades of Soviet propaganda, which denounced credit as an unbearable burden, had an effect. Even after the end of communism, Russians still referred to mortgages as “debt slavery”, preferring to save until they could buy their homes outright. Vladimir Putin, the country’s president, has spent two decades trying to convince his citizens to take a different view. In 2003, during his first term, he explained that mortgages might help solve “the acute problem of housing” facing Russians. His plea fell on deaf ears.
Explore more
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “War and prices”
Finance & economics July 27th 2024
- The rich world revolts against sky-high immigration
- Donald Trump wants a weaker dollar. What are his options?
- Revisiting the work of Donald Harris, father of Kamala
- How Vladimir Putin created a housing bubble
- Why is Xi Jinping building secret commodity stockpiles?
- Why investors are unwise to bet on elections
More from Finance & economics
Cheap solar power is sending electrical grids into a death spiral
Pakistan and South Africa provide a warning for other countries
Russian inflation is too high. Does that matter?
In a strong economy, price pressure can endure for a long time
Why you should repay your mortgage early
For the first time in decades, the arithmetic suggests settling housing loans
How AI will divide the best from the rest
Optimists hope the technology will be a great equaliser. Instead, it looks likely to widen social divides
The danger of relying on OpenAI’s Deep Research
Economists are in raptures, but they should be careful
Elon Musk is failing to cut American spending
DOGE has so far disrupted everything in government bar the deficit