Where do we live?

The information below concerns mostly young people because when my parents were young, people in Russia could get an apartment for free.

Eh… I said “for free”? No, it was joke. People worked hard for the same company 5-10-15 years to get an apartment. It was ok. The situation changed when the USSR fell into pieces.

Nowadays there are some companies that help employees buy flats, but it’s rather uncommon. Therefore young people in Russia:

a) live with their parents/grandparents, if they don’t have enough money to buy or to rent an apartment;

b) rent an apartment or a room;

c) take out a mortgage to have their own flat in future.

I think the first and the last points aren’t differing from other countries, so we’ll turn to the next one.

Rent

An average salary in Novosibirsk is about 30.000 roubles (=$957). Some people get bigger salary, others smaller.

The apartment houses is the most common type of accommodation in Russia, therefore almost everyone rents an apartment, not a detached house.

Rental cost vary:

– 7.000-12.000 roubles (=$225-385) per month for a room,

– 12.000-20.000 roubles (=$385-640) per month for a one-room apartment (1 room, kitchen, corridor, toilet and a bathroom),

– 14.000-25.000 roubles (=$450-800) per month for a two-room apartment (a living room, bedroom, kitchen, corridor, toilet and a bathroom).

Of course, you may find more expensive variants, I give the common ones.

A price depends on a district and apartment condition. First of all, apartments in the city center are highly valued: an apartment house may be worn, apartment itself may not be repaired, but it will be more expensive than similar or even better variant in remote districts. Why? The answer is clear: one of the main problems of our city is a great number of cars, they are everywhere. So another problem is traffic jams: it took me about an hour and a half* to get to my university when I was a student.

*By public transport and taking into account transfer from a bus to a subway station. Unfortunately there are only 2 lines and 13 stations of subway, and that is not enough for such a big city as Novosibirsk.

Apartment houses may be 2, 3, 5-storey (the older ones) and 9-25-storey (the newer ones), and consist of different number of entrances and apartments. I’ll try to show the most prominent.

For example, this green building is called “stalinka” (рус. Сталинка), because it was built under Stalin’s rule (1930-1950’s). The apartments in such houses were considered to be very big for those times, the total area of an ordinary 1-room apartment was 32-50 m². Now we have bigger ones ;)

Also such houses have relatively high ceilings, about 3 meters.

The “Stalinkas” were followed by “Khrushchyovkas” (рус. Хрущевка). They were named in honor of Nikita Khrushchev, who ruled the country at that time. “Khrushchyovkas” were opposite to Stalin-style houses: they were simple and very, very small (especially kitchen, about 6 m²).

One of the entrances.

Yes, it’s snow that should be white, but it has already become grey, and even black. The spring is coming!

In Russia we say ” it’s clean not where people clean everything up , but where they don’t litter”. But this phrase doesn’t work in our country.

A bit repaired khrushchyovka ;)

Do you see where the cars were parked? You know, there used to be a kind of lawn. I say “a kind of” because now I really can’t call it “a lawn”.

This house is newer. I think it was built in the 90’s.

These houses – in the late 80’s, early 90’s. It is called “Brezhnevka”, if I’m not mistaken (despite the fact it was built after Brezhnev’s death).

It’s a microdistrcit I live in, it’s new and very popular among young people. We pay about 16.000 roubles for a 1-room apartment including electricity and water. But we have to spend a lot of time getting to thecity center.