Ayano Hodouchi

The dreaded communal apartment, infamous as the cause of countless domestic scandals, is rising from the dead - fueled by the current economic hard times.

Originally created by the Soviet government to ease housing shortages by settling several separate families into one shared apartment, the communal apartment, or kommunalka, seemed to be a dying breed, as wealthy investors bought out whole families, reunifying the previously divided apartments.

In 1997, there were approximately 160,000 communal apartments in Moscow, which were home to more than 1.5 million people. By 2008, thanks in part to a city program for the resettlement of these apartments, the volume of such housing had been cut by almost half.

The majority of such original kommunalka flats are found in the centre of Moscow, where a square metre of communal residential property currently sells for $5,600 to $8,720, according to the DOKI real estate agency. In the central district there are now approximately 12,000 communal apartments, which are home to about 300,000 people.

Until the advent of the crisis, it seemed that Moscow would soon be freed of this historical housing legacy, but now the problem has become ever more complicated, thanks not only to a lack of government funds, but due to real estate owners themselves.

According to DOKI, since the beginning of the crisis, rising unemployment and loss of income have resulted in some people being left with little choice but to sell off real estate assets. Apartment owners have increasingly started to sell off rooms or even parts of rooms, to raise much needed money to pay mortgages and other debts. The market has begun to see a rise in the number of rooms or portions of flats for sale in apartments that were previously not communal residences. The majority of people initiating such deals are largely people who bought a flat in the last two to four years, and are now finding themselves in dire financial straits.

According to the general director of DOKI, Valery Barninets, the bulk of rooms on sale now are not located in downtown historical buildings, but in relatively newly developed areas of Moscow, in flats not originally used for communal housing. Commonly seen areas are those located around the metro stations Ulitsa Podbelskogo, Skhodnenskaya, Konkovo, Yuzhnaya, Vykhino, Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo, Marino, Bibirevo and Bratislavskaya. The main surge of offers came in May, then immediately doubled in quantity.

According to DOKI, compared to June last year, the number of such properties on sale has increased almost fivefold, with the number of rooms for sale in apartments that were not intended for use as communal apartments having reached 718.

The majority of such rooms for sale - 48 per cent - are in two-room flats. A further 23 per cent are for sale in three-room flats, while it is rarer to find two rooms for sale together in a three or four-room apartment - 9 per cent. The remaining 20 per cent of offers are for shares of a flat that don't correspond to a whole number of rooms.

According to posts on cian.ru, a real estate site with advertisements from both buyers and sellers, rooms in apartments start from approximately $50,000, while a share in an apartment, which includes the right to be registered at the address but no right to live there, start from about 40,000 roubles.

While at first glance this might seem like a substantial amount of money for a mere portion of an apartment (in some cases, there are even half-rooms on sale), Barinets said that for many, it is a chance to buy real estate in Moscow for a comparatively low price, and obtain the right to get a coveted Moscow Propiska, or registration, (without which it is difficult to live or find work in Moscow). The other main reason is that it's not considered a bad investment.

"For people with a million roubles or so, it's a not bad thing to use your money this way," Barinets said. "Prices aren't going down, so why not? Plus, there may be the chance of buying a larger share or rooms in the future, and eventually buying the other owner or owners out. Buying real estate piece by piece in this fashion is, of course, a cheaper alternative to buying outright."