Communal Apartments Make a Comeback: How the Secondary Budget Housing Market Is Changing

Why Communal Apartments Are Back in the Spotlight

Communal apartments—known as kommunalki—are large apartments divided into separate rooms, with different families living in each. Every family occupies its own room, while the kitchen, bathroom, and toilet are shared by all residents.

The renewed interest in these apartments today is primarily explained by the high key rate (16.5%), which has directly driven up mortgage rates (to 22%) and made purchasing a standard apartment unaffordable for many families. As we wrote earlier, government-supported programs are limited by caps introduced back in 2018, and currently cover only 50% of housing costs.

On the secondary market today, an average two-bedroom apartment in Moscow costs just over 21 million rubles. According to calculations by Argument Media, at the current key rate, the mortgage payment for a 30-year loan on such an amount exceeds 150–180 thousand rubles, and the total interest overpayment could exceed the apartment's actual cost. As a result, buying a two-bedroom on the secondary market becomes an insurmountable financial burden.

Against this backdrop, communal apartments turn out to be a more budget-friendly and liquid option. For example, in St. Petersburg, the share of those considering kommunalki as a purchase option in the economy housing segment reaches 10%. Though the kommunalka market itself has shrunk by two to three times over the past 20–30 years. It's precisely the shortage of affordable alternatives that makes them visible again in the overall demand structure.

Who's Buying and Under What Terms

According to experts, growing interest in kommunalki began back in late 2022 to early 2023. While buyers of communal apartments often include young families and those seeking starter housing, their ultimate goal is rarely tied to long-term residence. In 70-80% cases, communal apartments are purchased with the intention of renting them out or with the expectation of buying out all the rooms and reselling. 

Demand generates not only supply but also price growth. In 64 of Russia's 70 largest cities, the cost of a room in a communal apartment increased over the year by an average of 9.7%. And in Moscow, the average price of a room in a communal apartment has already exceeded 4.6 million rubles, with a 17.5% increase over the year. However, this is still less than the cost of a full two-bedroom apartment on the secondary market (from April to September 2025 alone, the average price per square meter rose by around 6%).

Risks and Points of Attention

But even amid growing interest in communal apartments, the market is full of serious risks, and many of them are directly related to the fact that communal apartments belong to the secondary housing stock. And it's precisely the secondary market today that is one of the most problematic segments. In the first half of 2025 alone, more than 5,000 cases of real estate fraud were registered in Russia, and these are only official figures. Experts note that the number of attempted scams is much higher: not all cases make it to court or are recorded by law enforcement.

Communal apartments are further complicated by their structure:

• often the property has multiple owners,
• rights were registered at different times,
• someone owns a share, someone else a room,
• there are sometimes "hanging" unregistered heirs,
• common areas (kitchen, hallway, bathroom) are legally in shared use.

All of this complicates property due diligence and makes the transaction potentially vulnerable. The buyer risks facing a situation where a month later a new heir appears, a neighbor challenges the legality of the share sale, and one of the rooms suddenly turns out to have a lien or restriction on registration actions.

As a result, the so-called "Dolina effect" may kick in, where the buyer ends up without both the apartment and the money. Such stories have become commonplace today. One recent case widely discussed in the press involved a pensioner who sold her apartment for 8.5 million rubles, explaining to the buyer that she was planning to move to her son in Australia. But several days later, she filed a lawsuit claiming she had been misled and allegedly became a victim of fraudsters. In such a situation, the buyer automatically faces the threat of losing both the property and the entire transaction amount.

Another risk that buyers often forget is that most communal apartments are located in buildings from the 1950s–1960s, built long before modern standards. This is worn-out, dilapidated housing stock that could at any moment be included in a resettlement program or require major renovation, or in the worst-case scenario—simply be declared unsafe.

What this means for buyers and the market

The return of communal apartments is not a market adaptation, but an alarming symptom of its systemic crisis, where affordability is achieved at the expense of renouncing the owner's basic rights to security and legal clarity of the transaction.

The rise in room prices and their liquidity is illusory in nature, as it's supported not by real housing demand but by speculative frenzy. As a result, the communal apartment market has turned into a high-risk zone where the chance to save or earn money easily turns into the loss of all investments.