OREANDA-NEWS From January to September, Russian banks issued 5.4 trillion rubles to customers for the purchase of real estate — the volume of mortgage loans issued was 10 percent higher than in the whole of 2022. Moreover, by the end of the year, mortgage sales are likely to reach a historical record of 6.9 trillion rubles.

The bank itself, in particular, issued mortgages to 214 thousand borrowers for 1.1 trillion rubles in nine months of the year, which is comparable in volume to the historical maximum reached in 2021. Russians took out mortgages most actively in September: this month the bank issued 232 billion rubles to customers for the purchase of housing. VTB stressed that over the past two months, the demand for preferential mortgages has sharply increased, interest in which has been steadily declining in the first six months.

Experts see an increase in mortgage lending in Russia as a threat of a financial crisis comparable to that in the United States in 2008. Oleg Samoilov, a member of the Russian Guild of Realtors, explained that the vast majority of operations on the market in recent years have been financed by mortgages, but the growth of real incomes of the population lags behind the rapid pace of lending. This leads to the fact that there are more and more people who cannot service their loans, which may cause a price collapse in the market.