Mortgage Renegotiations: Why Russians Are Flooding Banks with Requests to Restructure Their Loans

Rising Applications: A Key Indicator of Stress

In the fall of 2025, Russia's mortgage market is showing a persistent trend: more and more borrowers are approaching banks to request changes to the terms of their existing loans. From January through September, residents of the Central Federal District submitted 37,900 applications for mortgage loan restructuring—1.6 times more than during the same period in 2024.

Restructuring is a procedure in which a bank modifies the terms of an existing loan agreement to reduce the financial burden on the borrower. Typically, this happens when someone faces temporary difficulties: income has dropped, a job has been lost, or unexpected expenses have emerged. The main goal is to make debt servicing manageable.

Restructuring allows borrowers to:

• lower monthly payments;
• extend the loan term;
• obtain a temporary deferral;
• shift part of the debt burden to future periods.

Moscow and the Moscow region account for 57% of all applications—21,600 requests, reflecting the concentration of credit burden in the country's largest region. During the same period, banks approved 11,600 applications totaling 56.8 billion rubles, nearly double last year's figure.

At the same time, the share of problem loans is also growing. According to the regulator's estimates, by August 2025, overdue mortgage debt reached 0.81% (the highest level in the past five years). Given that the total volume of all issued and outstanding mortgage loans in the country has already reached 22.6 trillion rubles, such changes are becoming a notable signal of systemic market restructuring.

Rate Pressure: Why Mortgages Are Becoming Unaffordable

The market is now experiencing the delayed effects of late 2024, when the key rate stood at 21%. At that time, market-rate mortgages effectively moved into the 27–30% range, making conventional loans virtually inaccessible. To avoid losing sales, developers partnered with banks to massively roll out installment programs (developer-subsidized mortgages). Banks issued loans at ultra-low rates (0.01%, 0.1%, or 1%). The difference between this preferential rate and the actual market rate was compensated to the bank by the developer itself, which paid the bank a commission (discount). The key catch: the preferential rate only applied for a limited period, after which market conditions kicked in. People were lured in with promises that rates would drop to comfortable levels during this period—but that didn't happen. By fall 2025, the key rate did indeed come down, but only to 16.5%, which provides significant relief to borrowers but is still too high to dramatically reduce mortgage costs. As a result, market rates remain elevated, and borrowers whose year of preferential payments is expiring are suddenly confronting the real cost of their loans.