In a city known for its subterranean shopping malls and expensive new high-rise apartment buildings, another residential housing trend is emerging: topping off older, existing buildings by adding a few additional floors.
In a city khown for its subterranean shopping malls and high-rise apartment buildings, another residential housing trend is emerging: topping off older, existing buildings by adding a few additional floors.
Most often, new floors are being added to pre‑Revolution buildings in the city center, where demand for new, European‑standard apartments is high, as are asking prices.
Kyiv’s Blasig (Black Sea Investment Group) is one of the companies involved in the practice.
Blasig Managing Director Pavlo Deminsky said that adding new floors atop existing buildings is a logical solution to the perennial problem of upscale supply and demand.
“There is simply no supply of renovated apartments in the center,” Deminsky said. “If developers want to get more up‑market real estate in the city center, they are forced to renovate buildings, then build up.”
Anatoly Lakhno, general director of Citycon, a development company that has recently added floors to three buildings in the heart of Kyiv, estimates that close to 100 projects of this kind have been completed during the past five years and that hundreds more will be launched over the next two years.
Lakhno said developers first approached the city administration asking for permission to add floors to existing buildings in 1996. The first projects moved along slowly, he said, as various permits and architectural approvals were obtained. The delays were so significant, those early projects are only now being completed, he said.
“Many of the projects that have recently been completed were begun several years ago. Getting the permits necessary to add floors can take up to two years,” Lakhno said.
With the addition of new floors now a more widely accepted practice, and with demand for quality living space in the center strong, Lakhno sees the trend intensifying.
“We will soon see a burst of new projects,” he said.
Adding new top floors requires a bottom‑up approach.
Developers typically purchase a building’s top floor or attic, then obtain permission from building owners and the city before starting to build.
DTZ Zadelhoff Tie Leung Director Nick Cotton said that while his real estate firm hasn’t undertaken any such projects, he was aware of the trend. Like Deminsky, Cotton feels that it is inevitable that the practice will continue, since demand is high and there is a dwindling supply of good real estate space in downtown Kyiv.
“I think this trend has really kicked off. Land in the center of Kyiv is very limited,” Cotton said.
Adding floors is also profitable.
Blasig’s Deminsky said developers can see a 200 percent to 300 percent return on their investment.
He said that a relatively simple project involving a basic apartment shell can cost up to $400 per square meter, a fraction of the $2,000 per square meter apartments in the center can cost. Finished Euro‑style apartments typically cost about $800 per square meter.
Adding floors can actually improve an old building’s structural integrity and extend its useful life, Deminsky said.
“If needed, a developer can strengthen the building’s foundation by adding beams or by other methods,” Deminsky said. Deteriorating roofs are replaced with lighter, more efficient ones.
“You can actually decrease the weight of the building in many cases rather than increase it,” he said. “And many of these buildings are in desperate need of new roofs.”
