It seems every second building under construction in Kyiv today is an apartment block. But even with all the new homes coming onto the market, 222,000 families (or 660,000 people) are still waiting for an apartment, according to the city administration's Main Residential Supply Department. And the numbers aren't likely to fall in the near future.
For one, there's simply not enough space out there. Only 607,000 square meters of housing was added to Kyiv's housing stock last year. Although that represents a 20 percent increase over the previous year, it still means that less than one square meter was built for every person requiring housing.
Another reason for the long housing wait list is that most of the space that does come available goes to paying customers, rather than people on the wait list, who are entitled by Ukrainian law to a minimum level of free housing.
State-run building companies have little incentive to give their apartments away for free if people are willing to pay for them.
One state construction company, Zhytlo-Invest, built 98,000 square meters of housing space last year, attracting Hr 64 million in construction payments from the public. However, the company allocated only Hr 13 million of that to providing free apartments for those on the waiting list.
Zhytlo-Invest builds a wide range of apartment types, ranging in cost from Hr 1,170 ($292) per square meter in its building at Dragomanova 31B, in Kyiv's Poznayky district, to Hr 2,900 ($725) per square meter in the company's building on Konstantynivska 10 in downtown Kyiv.
Even at those prices, the apartments in buildings in the center of Kyiv are bought out long before the buildings are finished, said Serhy Lokot, Zhytlo-Invest's spokesman. The only space left is usually the office space on the first floor, which sells for Hr 1,600 per square meter ($400).
Prospective homeowners can usually pay state construction companies like Zhytlo-Invest about half the cost of construction as a down-payment, and pay the rest when the construction work is almost complete. * * *
More office space is coming onto the market. Expobank is building a five-story, 2,900-square-meter office building on Honchara 76 (complete with the seemingly obligatory mansard roof).
Construction started in 1994 and was supposed to take a year. Five years on, the shell of the building is complete, but the interior still has to be finished.
The bank had planned to use the space itself, but it is now offering the space for sale or rent.
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McDonald's Ukraine is continuing its impressive expansion on the Ukrainian market. The company plans soon to open its tenth restaurant in Kyiv, in a former gastronom at Sofievska 1 on Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Quattrogemini Ltd., a Finnish company, is the main contractor for the refitting work. Reconstruction work on the new 50-seat restaurant started in spring.
