Across the river from a wedding cake Stalinist skyscraper that once housed the cream of Soviet society, teams of workers drill round the clock to finish a shiny glass and steel office complex.
Down the road, a slick tower block rises over a row of Soviet-era tenements.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Russia, where buying and selling land was taboo a decade ago, is now one of the world's fastest growing commercial property markets, with sky-high prices and soaring demand fuelling investor interest.
"We are experiencing one of the most booming real estate markets in the world," said Michael Lange, a managing director of property services company Jones Lang LaSalle.
"People have started saying it might not be such a bad market after all ... especially with economic downturn in United States and a severe downturn in markets like Europe," he said.
The market is still embryonic and largely confined to Moscow, with only a handful of investors keen to try their luck in St Petersburg or the industrial cities of Siberia.
Though it is the world's largest country, Russia is plagued by a shortage of land, particularly in Moscow.
There, supply is tightly controlled by the city government. And an underdeveloped banking system has held back funding for investors.
But Russia is riding a wave of unprecedented economic and political stability, with President Vladimir Putin set to be re-elected for a second four-year term next year and the economy buoyant as oil prices climb.
And, for the first time since the 1998 financial crisis, newcomers are appearing on the Russian market.
"Demand since 1998 hasn't been from new arrivals, it has been from people that are already here, so it has been from improved business conditions and expansion within Russia," said Gerald Gaige, head of Ernst & Young's real estate consulting practice in Moscow.
"And after 2001, there started to be new arrivals again," Gaige said.
Soaring prices
Moscow, where most office blocks are still grey, sprawling state buildings, also has some of the highest rents in Europe as top companies scramble for first-class sites.
Prime office rents hover around US$625 per square meter per year, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, making it the most expensive office rent in Europe after London. Vacancy rates are just 4 percent.
With only a handful of major developments due to come on stream in the near future, prices are likely to rise still further.
Moscow, Europe's largest city, has only 0.5 square meters of office space for every inhabitant -- Europe's average is 4.6.
"If you calculate this up and spread it over the next five years you can imagine what kind of demand, what kind of upside potential there is," Lange said.
And institutional investors are finally expressing an interest in the market.
Scottish banking dynasty Fleming Family and Partners in May set up the first institutional fund for investing in Class A office buildings.
The fund, which has already raised US$60 million will be leveraged up to US$120 million to US$150 million.
"This is a very small sum by European standards," Maksim Kunin, manager of the FF&P fund, said.
"It is a first step before going into more complicated ventures," Kunin said.
The flurry of construction sites, cranes and cement mixers could also spread beyond Moscow, long the sole center of foreign investment and the focus of institutional interest.
"Third-tier cities are booming and have no office space. Krasnodar, Chelyabinsk are cities with over a million people and not a single square meter of [prime] office space," said Cameron Sawyer, president of GVA Sawyer property advisers in Moscow.
Set to last?
The current boom is not Russia's first. In the first years of post-Soviet euphoria, rents sky-rocketed in Moscow. But they came tumbling down during the 1998 crash.
A mass exodus of foreign companies and a rash of company bankruptcies left many prime spaces vacant.
"That wasn't a boom. That was froth, led by very few, deep-pocket tenants," Sawyer said.
The current upswing, analysts agree, is underpinned by stable economic growth and structural reforms but the road to investment is still bumpy.
Though land and real estate sales are legal in Russia according to legislation passed in 2001, Moscow city authorities have given the go ahead only to 49-year leases. While investors can buy buildings, they cannot buy freeholds.
The Russian market is still murky, with many by-laws contradicting other, older federal laws.
And there is little liquidity to encourage developers. Cumbersome legislation has kept foreign banks from lending to investors, while local banking remains underdeveloped.
Pension funds and mortgage-backed securities, major sources of liquidity elsewhere, are all but non-existent in Russia.
Opaque laws have also paved the way for corruption among city officials -- one economist described bribes paid by investors as absurd.
But, analysts say, with US and European markets in the doldrums, funds and developers will increasingly look to Russia.
"There is an appetite, there is interest, there is a willingness from institutional investors," Lange said. "We have seen them, we see them, we will be seeing more."
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique