Russian property show numbers grow 44%

AiGroup, the leading organizers of overseas property shows in Russia are reporting a 44% year-on-year rise in visitor numbers to their Bulgarian Home Exhibition.

The show which was held last weekend at the T-Modul Exhibition Centre in Moscow attracted 6130 visitors, up from 4253 in 2009, the first year that this exhibition was held.

The high visitor numbers mean that with 99 exhibiting firms, AiGroup has achieved its best ever visitor to exhibitor ratio of 61.9, beating its previous record of 44.9, recorded at the Moscow Property Show in 2008 which attracted 7,720 visitors with 172 participating exhibitors.

Kim Waddoup, Director of AiGroup comments: “Bulgaria has always been the most sought-after destination with our visitors because of the cultural, language ties with Russia and its close proximity but we were slightly surprised with the attendance given that there were only properties from one country on offer.”

Developer finance more popular than mortgage finance

Many of the exhibitors at the show reported that although there was strong interest in developer finance and stage payments but visitors in the main were unwilling to take out mortgages.

“We were extremely pleased with the level of interest at the show but only a few wanted to pay the full sum at the event. From our knowledge of the Russian market, we did not expect many people to raise finance through mortgages but our staged payment plan proved very popular” said Ekaterina Alexandrova, Director of Invest Development who exhibited at the show.

Sergey Kartsev from Macongroup who also took a stand agrees: “From our point of view the biggest surprise was the interest from people wanting to buy in the mountains but almost everyone wanted payment via installments with very few asking to pay in full with cash or mortgage finance.”