Russia tops Europe for least affordable mortgages, study finds

High interest rates and soaring housing prices have made mortgages in Russia the least affordable among major European cities, according to calculations by data platform Numbeo.

The study found that in Moscow, the average monthly mortgage payment is equivalent to 4.5 times the city's average monthly disposable income after taxes and mandatory deductions, placing the Russian capital at the top of Europe's least affordable mortgage ranking by a wide margin, Caliber.Az reports.

Three other Russian cities followed: Nizhny Novgorod, where mortgage payments amount to 3.6 times the average disposable monthly income, St. Petersburg at 3.3 times, and Kaliningrad at 3.2 times. The top 10 also includes Odesa, Kyiv, Minsk, Dnipro, Tirana and Chișinău.

By comparison, mortgage payments consume 1.4 times the average monthly disposable income in Prague; 1.3 times in Belgrade, Budapest, Lisbon and London; and 1.2 times in Paris and Milan. In cities including Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Vilnius, Zagreb, Madrid and Oslo, average mortgage payments are lower than residents' monthly disposable income.

The main factor behind Russia's poor affordability is the cost of market-rate mortgages. Although interest rates have fallen from the near-prohibitive 29% recorded at the beginning of last year, they remain exceptionally high. According to the Central Bank of Russia, the average interest rate on mortgages issued in June stood at around 18% annually. Meanwhile, Russians' real disposable incomes in the first quarter were 1.5% higher than a year earlier.

Numbeo's methodology assumes the purchase of a 90-square-meter apartment financed with a 20-year mortgage and no down payment. Actual mortgage conditions in Russia differ significantly. The central bank requires lenders to issue mortgages with at least a 20% down payment, while the average mortgage term reached 23 years and eight months in May, having exceeded 26 years at the end of 2025.

A 90-square-meter apartment is also considerably larger than the typical home purchased with a mortgage in Russia. According to Sberbank, nearly half of mortgaged homes purchased between January and May were one-bedroom apartments, while 37% were two-bedroom units. The median size of homes bought through subsidised mortgage programs—which account for the majority of mortgage lending—was 48.3 square meters. Real estate platform Cian estimated the average size of apartments purchased this year at 48.1 square meters.

In 2025, the average annual per capita income in Russia was sufficient to purchase 4.2 square meters of housing, down from 7 square meters a decade earlier, according to financier Yevgeny Kogan. He said government-backed preferential mortgage programs had fueled a sharp rise in housing prices, adding that the market's most favourable years are now over.

Housing price growth becomes even more pronounced when comparing equivalent properties. According to calculations by the Gaidar Institute, the hedonic price index for apartments in Moscow and the surrounding region rose 11.9% between June 2025 and June 2026, or 7.1% in real terms.

By Bakhtiyar Abbasov