Real estate market in Ukraine is undergoing dramatic changes. The prices are decreasing, and the forecasts anticipate another fall in 2009. Here is a review prepared by one of Discover Ukraine Network workers, Marina Pristinskaya.

For quite a long time now, Kiev has been the country's trendsetter for real estate prices. Today, as always, Kiev keeps the lead in the real estate market: all changes in pricing policy are initiated in the capital of Ukraine.

Ukrainian real estate market is going through changes, prices are going down. In the few latest months, prices have fallen to almost 50% in Kiev, according to the research provided by SV Development agency. The decrease in prices was forecasted, but not really anticipated, because residential apartments prices were soaring up since 2004. In four recent years, the costs grew almost to 100% across Ukraine’s oblast centers. For example, in 2008, the cheapest single-room apartment in suburbs of Kiev cost nearly $80,000: the average price per square meter of residential real estate in Kiev took over the prices for similar lodging in Warsaw and in the Baltic capitals.

After the 2008's peak, the average cost of secondary residential real estate started to decrease recently. The industry experts say that today, in 2009 the Kiev’s residential real estate prices have decreased to the level of 2005. In 2005, single-room apartments in the Obolon district of Kiev were offered for $45,000 - $50,000. Today, the prices have stopped changing and are "suspended" at the level of $40,000- $55,000 for a simple single-room apartment. Experts believe that this break will not last long; the pricess will roll down again soon.

About 90% of apartment owners are in the waiting position today. There is a psychological barrier the owners have to overcome, before they take a decision to sell the property cheaper than they'd anticipated. Only 10% of the sellers are in urgent need to change their property for money, so they are forming the offer dynamics in Ukrainian real estate market today.

Also, the same source informs that good bargaining works perfectly well in interests of the buyers these days: instead of the recent demand of $150,000 for a decent apartment in residential area, it is reasonable to offer $80,000 for this piece of property, and very probably its owner will agree to this deal. There are fewer and fewer Ukrainians who can afford to pay this price, either. Thus, Ukrainian realtors emphasize that real estate prices are continuously going down and are not expected to rise.

According to the forecast of the representative of SV Development, the current situation may develop into one of the two ways. The first scenario is- the banks are not provided by the state support, so the real estate debtors will be put in the strict frames and the number of apartments for sale will increase, and the new sharp decrease of prices will be provoked. The second scenario is that the banks may obtain some state support, and the prices will go down slowly. In this case the prices will decrease by around 35% up to the end of the year.