OREANDA-NEWS. The head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina revealed the scale of the rise in real estate prices during a speech at the Federation Council on Wednesday, September 22, TASS reports. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the price per square meter of housing in the country has increased by almost 40%.

According to Nabiullina, over the past year and a half, the "square" has risen in price by 39% - more than from the beginning of 2013 to 2020 (then the growth was 33%). The sharp increase in housing prices forced citizens to take out mortgages for larger amounts than before, the head of the Central Bank said.

“Of course, when house prices are going up, no matter what the mortgage rate is, people need to take a higher cost of the loan,” she said.

Earlier, Nabiullina said that the situation with housing prices in Russia will differ from region to region after the truncation of the preferential mortgage program. At the same time, according to the head of the Central Bank, the rush demand for residential real estate in large regions - Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Krasnodar Territory - will subside. Until now, it was in these regions that mortgages were mainly taken under the preferential state program.