Moscow shopping centres lead bank collateral

Shopping centres in Moscow have the highest share of property pledged to banks. Sergei Pivovarchik, managing partner at Consul Group, calculated the figures for RIA Real Estate.

He said 6.9 million sq m of large Moscow shopping centres are mortgaged, 42% of their total floor area.

In non-residential premises inside residential buildings, 36% of the stock is pledged, about 1 million sq m. In business centres the share is 30% (6.7 million sq m), in hotels 27% (871,000 sq m), and in standalone shops and markets 24% (440,000 sq m).

Warehouses and car-service centres are each 23% pledged: 1.6 million sq m and 296,000 sq m.

The lowest shares are in industrial complexes, 13% or 1.6 million sq m, and in administrative buildings, 10% or 6.5 million sq m.

Moscow has 32 million sq m of non-residential property under mortgage. Banks hold 93% of that pledge; private companies hold the rest. Privately owned non-residential property in the city is about 187 million sq m, so roughly 17% of it is pledged, Pivovarchik noted.

Sberbank is the largest mortgagee, with 11 million sq m. Then come VTB (4.3 million sq m), DOM.RF (1.5 million sq m), Sovcombank (about 1 million sq m) and Alfa-Bank (965,000 sq m).

Pivovarchik also pointed to a sharp rise in non-residential collateral in 2023 and 2024. In 2022, 3.6 million sq m of new commercial property was brought into mortgage. In 2023 the figure doubled, to 7.6 million sq m. In the incomplete year 2024, mortgage agreements were registered over 5.9 million sq m of non-residential property.

"Over the next year we expect the opposite trend. Large properties bought with debt have, for the most part, already passed from foreign owners to Russian ones. And a high key rate makes most debt-funded projects uneconomic," he said.

Follow Consul Group on Telegram.