Stavropol

Forget Moscow. Russia is warm, beautiful and inexpensive. Let me explain. The city of Stavropol is on the same latitude as Montreal, and has weather to match, heat in the low to mid-thirties Celsius in the summer, and usually no less than -10 in the winter. It has about 350,000 residents, who live in a wide variety of homes amongst trees, avenues, parks and playgrounds.
.
Many of them also own a second home, more about this later. House prices range from £600 to £60000 or more, although the higher figure would certainly buy you something quite special. Maintenance and running costs are minimal. The market for property, as for everything, is buoyant and foreigners don’t face restrictions. House prices have risen by about 50% in two years, and there is an enormous range and volume of houses for sale.

Stavropol - Founded in 1777, the “City of the Cross” originally consisted of a long avenue along a steep ridge. The avenue now has the train station at one end and the modern city centre at the other, and the city fans out in three distinct areas. The northern and southern estates are separated by two enormous forest parks, and the city itself lies in about a 2-mile radius around a more European landscaped park.

Parks aside, the local area has plenty of hot and cold natural springs and spa hotels. In fact the towns that are a few hours to the southeast are Russia’s holiday region and cater primarily to the spa and health market. They are beautiful, quiet, and include Europe’s largest city park. To the southwest is the beach and Crimea.

There is also a ski resort, extreme sports, a few cinemas, concert halls, museums and theatres and as much countryside as anyone could possibly want. It isn’t the cultural equal of a first-world metropolis, but it is the state capital and gets plenty of big Russian stars, as well as probably a better variety of films than the average British provincial city.

The transport links are adequate and you can easily fly almost anywhere, including to the beach in Sochi (Russia’s number 1) and direct to Madrid in the summer. Flights to Moscow are once daily from each of the four nearby airports, and take two hours. Georgia and Azerbaijan are only a few hours away by road, although you need visas.

The local population is of varied origins. There are European Russians of course but also minority groups of Turkic Caucasus nationalities from both within and outside of the Russian Federation. You will find Ukrainians and other former Soviets, Far Eastern Russians, ethnic Koreans and ethnic Greeks (who gave the city its name). There are no ghettoes, and neither is the population geographically as divided by age or occupation as, for example, London or Madrid and their chic or shabby barrios. The local cuisine is influenced by the ethnic mix, and defies the perception that the nation survives on cabbage and potatoes. You will not struggle to find a healthy mix of meat, rice, pasta and all manner of fruit and vegetables. I have never seen as many food shops as I have here, but that’s almost irrelevant as the majority of what you eat will be local produce bought in the market or from a keen gardener at the side of the road.
.
Most properties for sale here are flats in the classic Soviet blocks. Don’t let this put you off, because they vary enormously. They are known as “brick houses”, and usually have one to three rooms plus a kitchen, toilet and bathroom. The floor is often parquet throughout. There is also usually a balcony, and the decrepit appearance of many buildings is largely due to the balcony. Whereas we often regard the balcony as a proud luxury, for Russians it serves as the ultimate in double-glazing to protect against the winter, and as a conservatory, laundry drying-room or general storeroom.
.
The rooms are not specific in their use. They are usually all about 12 – 18 m2 in area and serve as living rooms until everyone becomes tired then the same room is used as a bedroom. Heating is via hot water radiators, which are switched on by official decree in the fall and off again in the spring.

Air conditioning is manual, ie. by opening the window (or just the door to the balcony), which I find quite refreshing.

.
The domestic hot and cold water are either metered or allocated by share of the total floor area of the building, all via the government, and won’t set you back much. The total bill for a family flat is about £15 a month, including electricity and gas. It is true that the water is turned off for a few weeks in the summer for maintenance, but unless there is an emergency you will be notified in advance. They tend to switch it off during working hours and back on again at night, anyway.

If you are viewing flats, start by asking about the age of the building. Anything over 15 years old is considered old, although quite frankly that venerable age rarely presents problems. In my experience age is pretty irrelevant, as almost nothing dates back to earlier than 1950, but people will suck their teeth and purse their lips if you buy anything second-hand. Decide if you care.

When you get to the flat, look at the yard. Contrary to the TV image of windswept estates, many blocks are built around leafy yards with a small playground for children, laundry lines and the rubbish bins. Ask - how often is the rubbish collected? It should be collected every day. Is the yard clean? There should be a resident janitor who keeps it spick and span. Finally, if you have children look to see if there are kids running around. This is a very social culture, so after school on sunny days there should be loads of children out playing, and old folks nattering away and selling garden produce. The further you get from the city centre the more likely the residents are to be alcoholics and drug addicts, so keep an eye out for men lying on the ground.

The entrance hall is the responsibility of the residents. The door ideally will have a “domofone”, otherwise known as a buzzer that is likely to veer more towards security than beauty. However, good signs are if the hall is clean, well-lit, recently-painted and as in one case I saw recently, had well-tended ivy decorating the doorway. Basically, are they looking after themselves and each other, or do they just not care? Tradition here dictates that they care, so if they don’t, don’t buy the flat.

Which floor is the flat on? The first floor always sells at a discount, because it is of course the least secure and may have nasty smells from the basement. Equally, the top may have problems with the roof, which will almost certainly be of metal. On the other hand, on the ground floor you won’t have to take the lift, which often exists but is rarely pleasant, and on the top you won’t have to worry about the neighbours forgetting to turn off the taps before going away for the weekend. I don’t think that any of this is unique to Russia, but remember to ask how often the roof it renewed and check whether there are bars on the ground floor windows.

The advantages of a flat are the ease of upkeep, the fact that you will certainly know your neighbours, and the often magnificent view. Furthermore, a good block may well have a basement where each house is allocated a separate room. The prices: here a one-room flat is about £14000, two-room £20000 and three £26000.

Houses - Whether or not to buy a house is not necessarily a question of location, but of lifestyle. The standard house is known as a “1-floor house”, and could be in the city centre or the suburbs. They stand behind tall walls on leafy streets, and generally have four or so rooms on a single floor, with a basement below and an attic above. They are warm in winter and cold in summer, but the real advantage is the garden. There is usually at least 100m2 of land, which is yours to do with as you please. Keep chickens, plant fruit trees, grow vegetables or even build a sauna or another house these are all very common, and nobody will bother you.

Both detached and semi detached houses exist, although detached is more common. You could also live around a shared yard, off the street, even in the city centre. There are also much larger, much more modern houses. The condition of older houses varies, and be aware that outside toilets are not yet entirely history here. Prices are about £17000 - £22000, but it’s eminently possible that you will find an alcoholic on the downward slope who will sell for a lot less.
.

.
Village Life - One of the best things about Russia, at least for a Briton, is the countryside. It is endless and timeless. The land is worked by collectives or families rather than giant corporations, at harvest time everyone pitches in to help.

The names of the villages themselves often reflect the optimism of their founders, for example “Safety”, “Charitable” and “City of Light”. At night there is virtually no light. However, thanks to the Communists there are village halls, schools and medical centres.

Village life is hard. The Caucasus is a land of abundance, and it all needs to be harvested. Fuel prices are rising, and not many people have capital to invest in farm equipment. Houses usually don’t have inside toilets, let alone broadband internet and in the winter it is seriously boring. Usually, only a few members of any extended family live in the ancestral village, with the rest in the city. Nevertheless, they do return at weekends in the summer, as well in their thousands as for the traditional Easter day of remembrance.

All this translates into fantastically cheap property. A house with a smallholding, meaning plenty of land, outbuildings, chicken runs etc, will set you back about £600. There are plenty of empty houses, and the families know that no-one is likely to move in soon. Adding to your land is simple for the same reason. As for the comfort question, well... To connect a phone line is £100, and there is gas, electricity and water. The people who live in the village are skilled in terms of manual labour, and aren’t expensive to hire. Prices for food, particularly meat, are high, so there is no reason why you couldn’t set up a successful small farm, and live in bucolic tranquillity, as long as you were able to leave before country life sent you crazy. I am not a farmer, but the bottom line is that here everything grows and everything is cheap.

Stavropol 11 Apr 2008, 11:07 - Report