Foreigners view Belarus as a calm and comfortable country to live in
Foreign citizens view Belarus as a calm, neat and quite comfortable country to live in. This is confirmed by the fact that domestic state and commercial developers often sell apartments to foreigners – as stated by Belarus’ Architecture and Construction Minister, Ruslan Parkhamovich, during his talk with the Belarus 1 TV channel.
Speaking of the foreign investors’ interest in the Belarusian construction sector, Mr. Parkhamovich noted, “Investments in construction – primarily in housing – are of major interest among individuals. Citizens of the neighbouring countries view Belarus as a calm, neat and quite comfortable place to live in. That is why state and commercial developers are constantly selling apartments to foreigners. Housing is in demand. As for legal entities, in order to come and start construction here, they need to gain reputation, be self-confident and invest their own funds – rather than to collect money from Belarusians. With this in mind, it is quite challengeable to enter this market. We can primarily say now that accommodation is bought by foreign individuals. Housing enjoys demand – especially in the capital and regional centres.”
As for Belarusian citizens, domestic developers strictly follow the standard set by legislation: in line with a Presidential decree signed on July 2nd, 2020, their profit limit should not exceed 5 percent if housing construction is carried out at the expense of citizens. The document was adopted in order to reduce the cost of housing construction in the country. According to the decree, construction of multi-apartment residential buildings with use of citizens' funds is carried out by developers (customers) with a profit of no more than 5 percent of the estimated cost determined in current prices, unless otherwise established by the President. Mr. Parkhamovich stressed that this requirement is strictly observed.
“Everything is checked and controlled. If the profit obtained during construction of a residential building is higher, then a developer must return part of the funds to meet the established percentage. This is strictly monitored since we know that housing construction is a social and very sensitive sphere and, as soon as someone starts behaving incorrectly, citizens react and immediately begin to at least inform about this. I do not remember a case when anyone began to distort these issues, trying to dishonestly make money on housing construction. If there are any mistakes here, they are rather of a technical character and due to poor awareness – rather than intentional,” the Architecture and Construction Minister explained.
