Rankings and the Typology of Russian Regions by Housing Affordability and Availability in the 1990s–2020s

Abstract

Until the present, the common approaches predominantly employed by the government of the Russian Federation in fostering mortgage lending have not yet resulted in reduction of regional imbalances and, moreover, contributed to exacerbation of the problem of housing affordability during last five years. Thus, it became objectively necessary to differentiate the policy on housing construction in accordance with the housing market’s features in the Russian regions. Having identified some shortcomings in the Russian-language studies that made use of standalone, integral and groups of indicators as well as classifications of regions, this article proposes an approach to ranking and composing a typology of Russian regions based on the calculations of nine indicators. These are regional shares in all-Russian housing construction volumes in urban and rural settlements during the 1990s–2020s compared with average regional shares in the total population, changes in the average size of apartments and individual houses built, average housing affordability coefficients and the average share of individual housing construction in total housing construction in the medium term. The calculated indicators reveal considerable volumes of second housing construction within largest agglomerations and the increasing share of individual housing construction in 51 regions. It was also found that the average size of apartments built decreased in 79 Russian regions during the 2000–2020s, and there was 1.4 to 3.5-fold difference across regions in the average size of apartments and individual houses built. As a result, nine classifications of regions were composed comprising five groups each and a typology of Russian regions consisting of 16 types / subtypes characterising housing affordability and housing availability. The proposed author’s typology of Russian regions allows enhancing or adjusting the state housing policy taking into account regional housing markets’ differences between urban and rural settlements and between the sectors of apartment buildings and individual housing