Complex Built in Baden-Baden Spirit

Over the centuries, crowds of Russians from aristocrats to oligarchs have flocked there. Ivan Turgenev chased the woman he loved to the town and Fyodor Dostoevsky gambled away all his money in the local casino.

But now it seems that one of Europe's most exclusive resorts is heading to Moscow.

Twelve kilometers southwest of the Moscow Ring Road and a long way from the Black Forest, an enterprising German developer is set to build a new Baden-Baden.

Well, at least a project named after the spa town is being built. A cluster of 39 German homes will be constructed on the banks of the river Desna, designed to appeal to Muscovites seeking a life beyond the chaotic capital.

The Baden-Baden project is just one in a series of Disneyland-type developments that are popping up around the capital. Similar projects also include imitation English and Canadian villages.

As property prices soar in the city, an increasing number of Muscovites, looking to upgrade from their Soviet apartments to family homes, are heading out of Moscow and into these islands of exclusivity.

"The name Baden-Baden was not chosen by chance," said Nina Reznichenko, head of the out-of-town property department for IntermarkSavills, the company managing the project.

"The new cottage settlement of Baden-Baden is not an attempt to recreate the original, but it is an attempt to transfer some of the aura of the place," Reznichenko said.

Designed by Munich-based architects, Neumayer & Partner, the individual, detached houses have suitably Teutonic-sounding names, such as Rothenbach, Lichtental and Lerchensand. And a German, it is claimed, would feel right at home.

"This is not an just another anonymous village 'built in the European style,' as the adverts for almost every second village say," Reznichenko said.

Construction on the site will start either this month or in January and the entire development should be finished by December 2009.

As for the cost, despite the soaring prices, the ersatz Baden-Baden is still a considerably cheaper option than the real thing.

Preliminary prices for the properties range from just about $1.9 million to $6.1 million for a 4,300-square-meter plot.

On the other side of town, 30 kilometers north of Moscow and just off Pyatnitskoye Shosse, a corner of some foreign field is being turned into little England.

Designed by a team of Russian architects, the Greenwich project, named after the leafy London suburb, claims to offer potential residents "the real spirit of old England."

The houses are named after an eclectic range of famous Britons and towns, from Wellington and Windsor to Norwich and Sheffield. Despite the attempt to suggest style and stately residences, they feel more like municipal housing projects than stately homes.

The inhabitants of a 250-square-meter, two-story Sheffield home will have a veranda, garage, three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

The village is being built by Russian developer Monolit, with the cheapest "town house" terrace properties costing about $240,000.

And it is not just from Europe that developers are drawing inspiration. Just north of the Moscow Ring Road , the Noviye Veshki development is being designed and built by Canadian companies.
The Sawatzky Group is the main company behind this mammoth project. More than 500 homes will be built with an average lot size of 700 to 900 square meters. Interested occupants can choose from a selection of 16 different land-residence packages.

Space in a standard home is currently selling for $3,900 per square meter, the company says.
The gated community, which will be guarded around the clock, will also include a swimming pool, tennis courts, a school and kindergarten.

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source: realestate.moscowtimes.ru

Crystal Island Receives City Approval

Leading British architect Norman Foster looks set for another major Russian project, this time a large, eye-catching entertainment and business center in the south of Moscow.

Plans for the Crystal Island project, dubbed "the Christmas tree," were approved by the capital's urban-planning council, controlled by Mayor Yury Luzhkov, at a meeting Friday.

The designs for the 2.7-million-square-meter complex will include a 450-meter tower, including a 300-meter glass needle, to be built on the Nagatinskaya alluvial plain, between Prospekt Andropova and the Moscow River. Development company Russian Land, headed by Moscow real estate magnate Shalva Chigirinsky, is behind the project.
Despite expressing concern over the potential damage that the project could do to the city's skyline, Luzhkov threw his weight behind Foster's project, state-owned Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported. He even went so far as to thank Foster for opting to offer his design to Moscow after both China and Kazakhstan expressed interest in the project. Moscow's main architect, Alexander Kuzmin, insisted that the project would bring much need facilities to the area.

The proximity of the project, however, to UNESCO-protected churches in Kolomenskoye park has angered some. "This is a sin and will lower the historical value," architect Yury Bocharov said, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported.

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source: realestate.moscowtimes.ru

Region Insulated From the Crisis

BUDAPEST - "[Central and Eastern Europe] is certainly better insulated from risks of a major shock than other parts of Europe," the group's chief economist, Simon Rubinsohn, told a real estate conference in Budapest in early December.

"The economies are better balanced, we don't have excesses even in terms of current account capital inflows or in terms of house prices. ... To the extent the credit crunch does begin to bite, I think it is relatively well protected as well," he said.
Rubinsohn said mortgage levels in the region were also significantly lower than in Western Europe.

But he warned that Baltic countries might face problems over the structure of capital inflows into the region.
"In the Baltics, you have capital inflows of other investment amounting to 15 percent of GDP. This is huge, and leaves the region incredibly vulnerable," Rubinsohn said.

"A lot of that is bad borrowing that is helping to finance mortgage lending in the region. Southeast Europe has a slightly better balance when we compare it to the [Central and East European] area, which, in this context looks like an oasis of stability," he said.
Baltic currencies, along with the Romanian leu, have suffered in the recent market turbulence, which stemmed from troubles in the U.S. subprime mortgage sector, although core Central European currencies have held firm.

Property investors at the conference said borrowing conditions in the region were still sound, and that despite a rise in borrowing costs for financial institutions, there were good prospects.
"I see quite a few buyers that are sitting on their hands right now," said Otis Spencer, of Heitman, which manages about $20 billion in real estate investments worldwide.

He said there was some pessimism over commercial assets but that he saw no sign of that on the residential side.
"Banks are very eager to lend ... a 100 percent mortgage, so there's quite a dichotomy there," Otis said. He said economic growth in the region was relatively strong. Coupled with growing affluence, higher wages, and steady growth in mortgages, that provided for good prospects in real estate investments.

Otis said that in Poland and Hungary there was healthy demand in development of residential units, while the office market was a good asset class across the whole region.

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source: realestate.moscowtimes.ru

Kazakhstan Real Estate Cools Off

Growth in Kazakhstan's real estate prices slowed to around 50 percent year on year in November after a peak of more than 70 percent during summer months, official data showed Wednesday.
ALMATY, Kazakhstan - A liquidity shortage in Kazakhstan, hit hard by the global credit crunch, has weighed on many of its booming nonenergy sectors, including the real estate and construction industries.

Growth in real estate, however, remained high despite wider financial woes, with average sale prices on the secondary housing market jumping 46.5 percent to $1,100 per square meter in November, the state statistics agency said. Secondary market prices were up 73 percent year on year in August.
Average rent prices grew 23.3 percent, it said. In the financial capital, Almaty, primary real estate prices rose 58 percent in November, year on year.

Rapid growth of Kazakh banks, which have borrowed heavily on the international debt market, has fueled the real estate boom in the Central Asian state, where a growing share of transactions are carried out through mortgages.
On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's cut its outlook to negative from stable on eight Kazakh banks, saying it was concerned over rising pressure on asset quality and liquidity.

Kazakhstan's economy is not threatened by a global credit crunch and a construction slowdown may put growth on a more sustainable path, President Nursultan Nazarbayev said in November.

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source: realestate.moscowtimes.ru

Komatsu to Open Plant In Yaroslavl

Komatsu, the world's second-largest maker of earthmoving machinery, will start its first factory in Russia to assemble excavators and forklifts by June 2010 to benefit from the nation's oil-funded construction boom.

A total of 6.9 billion yen ($61 million) will be spent to buy land and build the factory in Yaroslavl, about 300 kilometers northeast of Moscow, the Tokyo-based company said Friday in a statement. Komatsu plans to build 3,000 excavators and 7,000 forklifts there in 2011 and forecasts sales of 50 billion yen for the year to March 2012, about 2 percent of its estimate for the current fiscal year.

The factory is part of the company's strategy to tap emerging markets to meet demand for construction equipment. The market for construction machinery in Russia will probably increase more than 78 percent to 32,000 units by 2009, the statement said. Forklift sales may double to 33,000 units.

The company holds about a 20 percent share of the construction machinery market in the country and is the largest supplier after Hitachi Construction Machinery, the world's biggest maker of giant excavators.

Komatsu shares have risen 29 percent this year.

CEO Kunio Noji pledged to take on U.S.-based Caterpillar throughout Asia. Worldwide construction machinery sales rose about 13 percent in the April-to-June quarter, spurred by emerging markets such as China, India, Russia and the Middle East.

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source: realestate.moscowtimes.ru