Economic Justification of the Relation between Owners and Renters at the Housing Market in Saint-Petersburg

The mass privatization carried out in Russia led to the emergence of a broad class of homeowners, majority of whom are incapable of fulfilling their ownership-related duties neither psychologically nor economically. They assume that their duties and problems as owners should be fulfilled and solved by the government and do not have funds in their possession enough to keep their property in proper state. In the newly built houses, where homeowners associations exist and property rights are diffused, the relationships between owners are often overly complicated, which also prevents the normal functioning of such houses. The problem of rental housing in Russia is still underexplored. The exact share of rental housing in the total housing stock in unknown, because apart from state/municipal housing, rented through the mechanisms of the contract of social rent, there is also a not very transparent market of houses and apartments let by the private proprietors directly to tenants. The data about the number of the privately owned tenant-occupied dwellings are not available in the official statistics. Often this kind of transactions is within the ‘grey’ zone, as the landlords attempt to avoid paying taxes on their rental income. Besides, tenants of the apartments in state/municipal housing facilities may also lease out their apartments on the market as the market rent rates are usually several times higher than the rent they are actually paying. In any case, a significant share of population of Russian Federation consists of tenants whose problems and rights remain underexplored. The purpose of this research is to fill this gap.