Quote Originally Posted by Basil77 View Post
I still stand that average renting price in Moscow for a decent 3-rooms flat would be no less than $1700 a month. A friend of mine inherited 2-rooms flat in Kuzminki from his grandmother (it's an ordinary flat in a panel house buit in early 80s) and he leases it for 50 000 roubles (about $ 1600) a month. He says there isn't a problem at all to find a customer for such a price.
Thanks for your super-informative posts!

This would be an absolutely acceptable rent for me, on my current London salary. No problem, I could be more.
However, I doubt I'd get the salary I'm getting now, if I was a Russian person doing this job in Moscow! So it's not really comparable. Probably, I'd get about half and then I that rent would be a stretch.

What is included? Heating, Water, electricity, gas? Any taxes for just living?

I took a 1 bedroom flat after returning to London. I really don't like this building, and the plumbing is terrible. There is a mobile phone mast on the roof, very bad for health.
But I'm saving money and at least I am in one of the best areas of town. It sounds like Moscow is worse than London, but probably not by much.

I often compare with Sweden, and Sweden has the same Wild West situation with rental flats that Moscow seems to have. People get/got rental contracts from the state but there isn't enough supply so the system is corrupt.

The housing styles in Sweden are much more similar to Russia than the UK, but the equivalent of "Khrustevska" are a bit better quality, I think. Not much though. They had a plan to build 1 million flats in 5 years, and the result is quantity over quality. Only immigrants and very poor people live there now.

I stayed in a flat of the post war Stalin era when I visited Minsk. 2 rooms, good sized and high ceilings, facing the street. It wasn't a grand building, but it was very nice indeed. If I could live like that in London I'd absolutely love it. I probably could afford a mortgage for a similar type of flat in Stockholm, but never in London. Very good location too, next to the Peace monument. Definitely no noise from the neighbours and it had been fully renovated to an excellent standard. I think it had original parquet floor. No fireplaces. The plumbing was good too.

You entered the house from a nice yard behind the building, with a little park, playground etc. But for such a nice building it had an very ugly front door (painted steel) and the stairs were spartan and quite ugly. Not vandalised, just ugly. I have no idea how the owner got hold of the flat, and I am pretty sure he charged me at least double the real rent for staying there. The other inhabitants were locals, but at least half the cars parked outside had German or Russian license plates. No idea what the deal was with that.

I have a positive view of Russia as a place to live - if you have money! And also Belarus and to a lesser degree Ukraine (saw a lot of poverty there). However, these are terrible places to be poor! What if something happened....
I think it would be really scary to live somewhere that has literally NO social security and people are totally dependent on friends and family if something happens. I don't know what the exact healthcare situation is.
Moscow property prices will probably continue to go up, up, up!

Quote Originally Posted by Basil77 View Post
The question was about "clean and renovated" flat with 2 beedrooms and a livingtoom. The closest analog I can think of is трёшка в доме бизнесс-класса с хорошим ремонтом и мебелью. So I posted the prices for such type of flat. The flats you described are usually located in very ugly houses wich halls and elevators are covered with graffity and piss, garbage near house's front doors etc. Flats for rent in such houses usually has very ugly if any furniture, very dirty and with cocroaches.


Something should be done. People who have to live in buildings like that may end up being depressed or becoming alcoholics. It's disgusting. It's anti-social behaviour. I am all in favour for really hard punishments for people who vandalize public property.

As for me, if I ever lived in Russia, it probably wouldn't be in Moscow -- it just doesn't really attract me.