Several commercial organizations-developers have temporarily suspended housing construction because of the situation on the foreign exchange market in Belarus. The winners are only those builders who sell bonds for housing in the U.S. dollars. Those, selling housing for the rouble bonds, are forced to recalculate the cost per square meter.
«Housing in our house used to be sold at Br2.7 million per square meter, which is about $900, said one of the largest developers on condition of anonymity. — One meter costs about $800 there. Under the new rate of Br3.4 rubles to a dollar the previous price of a meter is even less than its cost. But we need to pay the credit back in the foreign currency. The sales have naturally stopped.»
According to the developer, the organization has had to temporarily suspend the contracts of participatory construction. The transition to the bonds with a square meter’s cost in the currency or a peg of a square meter’s cost in the joint construction to the interbank exchange rate are considered as a possible way out of this situation, reports «Komsomolskaya Pravda in Belarus.»
Other organizations have not stopped the construction, but have been forced to suspend the sale of housing bonds. «For a week or so. We have ruble denominated bonds, but it is unclear at what price to sell them. I think the cost will have to be raised up to Br300 thousand per meter,» told in the company.
«The rise in prices is simple: if the legal persons buy the currency at the new rate of the National Bank, bring components and building materials for the currency from abroad — how can they not become more expensive? Gas and electricity prices have gone up, as well as fuel. The cost of construction is increasing,» explained developer.
However, all the developers say that rise in the housing price can not be infinite, since people won’t be able to buy it. «Our customers still need to somehow buy dollars to buy the bonds. Revenues in dollar terms are falling, too, that is, the purchasing power is declining,» explained the developer.
At the same time, real estate investors, who have already been building under the contracts, the cost of housing will not still grow, but the cost of construction works may increase. Index of construction works is set monthly by Minstroyarchitecture. The last index was less than 1, that is, equity holders are not asked to pay extra. But it’s also too dangerous to restrain the index by order: when construction costs rise, it makes the developer cut salaries,» said the representative of a commercial building company, Ivan Vishnev.
As Telegraf previously reported, there was an increasing public demand for foreign currency in Belarus in March this year. Earlier this month, the National Bank has tightened the procedure for purchase of foreign currency by banks to meet the demand of the population, increased the term for funds’ reservation to purchase foreign currency at the Stock Exchange up to 30 days (which was overturned two weeks later), and decided not to sell the currency to commercial banks for sale to the public. But at the end of the month the National Bank was forced to allow a 10% deviation from the official rate in currency purchase-sale transactions between banks and business entities (previously 2% deviation was recommended).
All these events have severely affected the activity of the Belarusian banks. Many of them have begun to restrict the issuance of loans in local currency. Some banks have been forced to introduce temporary restrictions on the operations of bank cards, issued in Belarusian rubles.
