Mortgage lending as a tool for socio-economic development in the Arctic zone

Abstract

The problem of housing provision occupies an important place in the socioeconomic development of the Arctic regions of the Russian Federation. Mortgage lending with government support is a key financial instrument in this context. To support the population of the Arctic region, the influx of new personnel and the development of the construction industry in the Arctic, in December 2023 in the Russian Federation launched a new preferential programme «Arctic Mortgage», under which the residents of the Arctic region will be able to buy housing and improve their standard of living. The article presents an overview of the mortgage lending market in Russia for the period from 2019 to 2023: it analyses the dynamics of the number of credit institutions, changes in the weighted average rate on mortgage loans, as well as the share of preferential mortgages in the specified period of time. The factors influencing the volume and development of the mortgage lending market are highlighted, and the main reasons for the use of government-backed mortgage loans are identified. The current state of the mortgage lending sector is analysed in the context of the current economic situation. All these data are borrowed from the materials of the websites of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the Association of Banks of Russia and other statistical reports placed in the public domain on the Internet. However, they have not previously been published in scientific publications.