The State of Soviet Housing Stock

Unlike the UK, where most towns and cities display an infinite variety of housing styles, the Ukraine is stuck predominantly with two. Soviet Social and Russian Renaissance. The latter, is generally a 15 stories plus, modern jerry built structure, often with rounded corners and topped out with orthodox inspired domes.

The Soviet stock seems to have been inspired by Lego; both the shape and building materials. There seems to be about 3 basic designs, 5 story, 9 story and 12 story all of which are rectangular and utterly uniform. We are house hunting for Soviet stock based on two factors, firstly it’s cheaper and secondly its less likely to fall down.

When I first started to look at flats with Tania, it was somewhat of a culture shock. Many of the buildings look like prison blocks, some of them after a riot. From grey breezeblock to cheap and unevenly laid bricks, the exteriors are beyond depressing.

Usually it doesn’t get any better when you enter, the impression of a prison continues at the entrance doors. Heavy, steel and windowless they look as inviting as a cup of tea with Dr Crippen. The more upmarket ones are locked and have either a code to enter or a little magnetic key. In the down-market versions, the doors are open wider than jaws of a nun in a sex shop.

A Once Grand Staircase

It doesn’t even get better with the lobbies. Because nobody owns or generally cares about the lobby areas, they are dark, unkempt, musty and dirty. Some owners have installed nice lights outside the doors to their flats but many haven’t. Negotiating the lobby stairs at night is best done with a Labrador in tow and without touching the handrails. Buildings over 5 stories will usually have lifts. These generally look like the lobbies only a lot smaller. They are dark dank and small, with the ability to turn a career Agoraphobe, Claustrophobic. Rather than rise smoothly up inside the building, they clang and clank, bashing into god knows what jutting into the lift’s shaft. I am not sure if the buttons inside represent the floor you require or your chances of survival.

As dark and depressing as this sounds, its not all bad. When you go through the doors to a Ukrainian apartment its like crossing some sort of mythical border between the third world and the first. Most apartments are well decorated, often double glazed with high ceilings and thick walls. In fact better than most new builds in the UK. The Soviet touches are still there; the central heating will be communal and switched on only outside the summer, a modern boiler is need if you want hot water in July. Unless renovated the pipework will have been fitted with all the finesse of surgeon wearing boxing gloves and the electrical circuits may require you to earth yourself before switching on a light. In general though the apartments are nice. We haven’t really seen a very bad one, apart from the one we are renting at the moment and there have been a few which have been interested in buying. It’s just a shame about the estate agents!

All Estate Agents are Equal

Lying, cheating, swindling. These are all words that spring to mind when describing estate agents. In the UK they are renown for their high-pressure sales, ruthless behavior, pinstripe suits and BMW’s. Its exactly the same in the Ukraine, with the exception that the pin stripe suit has been replaced by jeans and a leather jacket and the BMW is replaced by … err, well nothing. Of the several agents we have met here in the last few weeks, the most striking feature has been the lack of wheels. Not a Lada between them, nary a Trabant in sight.

Fortunately, the money grabbing ruthlessness is still much in evidence.   One of the agents we were using continuously allowed Tania to pay his bus fare when travelling between properties. When we put in an offer on a flat, it turned out his fee would be in the region of $2000. And for that, we would be sorting out most of the documents on our own. To put that in perspective, $2000 will get you a very good Lada with low profile tires and an almost matching spoiler.

The Ukrainian property market is not unlike the Klondike gold rush. An unregulated and tangled madness, with everyone digging for gold but quite often getting stung when the mine collapses.

Let me explain a little. In Soviet times, life was pretty simple. You lived in a flat. The flat was owned by the state. You paid a little rent. Easy. When communism collapsed, in many cases ownership of the property went to the occupants, either for free, or for a stupidly small fee. Overnight a country of tenants became a country of owners. This was all very nice until some owners starting getting knocks at the door from complete strangers clutching fistfuls of documents. These documents, it turned out were the ownership papers from before 1917. They had been handed down generation-to-generation and now the pre-bolshevist ancestors were laying claim on their properties from beyond the grave. Except in many cases they weren’t. Sensing some easy money, some enterprising people set about forging papers and trying to evict people from their own homes on the basis of a 1917 document printed on an Epsom inkjet and aged with weak tea. It was a mess.

Adding further to this mess is the tax regime. If you sell a house within 3 years of buying, the seller has to pay 5% tax, the buyer 2%. Now, the wonderful estate agents, explain to the sellers that although the house will sell for say $40000, we will declare its value at only $10000. Wonderful, thinks the seller, I will save a huge tax bill. Whilst this is all very nice for the seller, the buyer moves in to his $40000 flat, and finds his insurance company will only insure it for $10000 and six months down the line, there is a knock at the door from the tax man trying to work our why your lovely home has devalued $30000 in the last 18 months and presenting you with the previous owners tax bill.

The estate agents know all of these problems but being silver tongued wankers, they manage to explain away all these problems with all the easy charm of a conman cheating his own grandmother. The problem is, most people fall for it and as such, the mess just gets bigger and bigger. We however are boxing clever. We are using a solicitor to advice us on these situations, and they are good solicitors. They must be, they drive BMW’s