How the construction market of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region has changed KVS Holding – 28 April 2023

The KVS group of companies became one of the first developers in St. Petersburg to master the new scheme. The first escrow object is a quarter “Atmosphere” in a microcity “New Sertolovo” – construction began in 2018. And in the same year, the construction of several large projects was completed: a business class quarter “Nautilus” and LCD comfort class “Lived once”two queues “Clearly. Yanino” and one – in the LCD “Kirill and Daria”. As part of the holding, the company “KVS. Real Estate Management, engaged in the management of “commerce”, and the next year – the Real Estate Agency “KVS”, which works with secondary housing.

In order to have time to use the usual shared construction, in 2019 developers brought a record number of housing to the market of the St. Petersburg agglomeration – 4.1 million sq.m. And already in the first quarter of 2020, this figure was two times lower than usual.

The spread of coronavirus in the spring of 2020 hit businesses, and for citizens it turned into a reduction in income and unemployment. At the same time, oil prices fell, and the currency rose in price.

With the onset of the pandemic, builders had to hastily change the usual patterns of interaction with home buyers – they all went into self-isolation. And here the one who took care of the digitalization of sales in advance turned out to be in a better position. The KVS group of companies, for example, launched an online apartment store back in 2019, and this decision turned out to be very timely. When it became impossible to work offline, almost 100% of transactions for its objects came through the Internet platform. The holding did not have to reorganize in a difficult environment and spend money on creating a digital product.

In the spring of 2020, a state-supported mortgage program was launched. Initially, the rate was 6.5%, and the maximum loan amount for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region was up to 12 million rubles. By the end of the year, against the backdrop of growing demand and declining supply, the average cost per square meter in new buildings in St. Petersburg, according to some reports, increased by more than 30%, and in 2021 it added another 27%.

The era of self-isolation has not only taught buyers to buy housing online, from a smartphone or even remotely from another city, but also changed their view of comfort. For remote living, the convenience of planning and the presence of a balcony or loggia, as well as a landscaped area near the house, turned out to be especially important: a private closed courtyard where you can relax in your free time, and shops within walking distance, a walk to which replaces a trip to a large shopping center .