Привіт and greetings from Kyiv I'm here in my favorite area, Golden Gate
where many of my clients prior to Russia's invasion Ukraine
had bought property it's one of my favorite areas it's like a cool hipster area lots of cafes and bars
and I've been receiving many messages in the last two weeks from consulting clients about
buying property here in Kyiv now that might say mad to a lot of people Conor, there's a war going
on? And yes indeed there is definitely a war going on here in Ukraine we have occasional air alerts
and obviously you've probably seen rocket attacks on Kyiv and Odesa in the news but the fighting is
a good bit away from Kyiv it is concentrated in the east and south of the country also a bit away
a couple hours away from Odesa so the question is can you first of all buy property here in Ukraine
at the moment when there's a war going on can you get an amazing deal if you're interested
in buying property and taking on obviously the risk that involves buying in a country that's at
war let's go and find out while we take a stroll here in Golden Gate in this lovely area поїхали!
Now before the invasion I was running a program called Slavic Utopia Secrets: Ukraine a lot
of guys were buying property here because they planned to move for three to 12 months per year
to Ukraine and I'll put a link to it down below in the description in case you're watching
this in the future and we will be rerunning the program going forward because I am confident as
I predicted on day 30 of this war that you that Russia would lose and here in Kyiv obviously
around that time a little bit afterwards it was clear that you Kyiv had well Ukrainians
had won the battle of Kyiv and Russian forces retreated far away from here so first thing
to talk about I guess is is it possible to buy property here? Yes, they did close the register
for real estate transactions at the beginning of the war but it has been open for quite a while
and there is a low volume of transactions that's taking place but there definitely
are a lot of deals out of some around discount we'll say 20 to 30 percent if you see something
like 80 percent fire sale be suspicious of that because that is not typical for the market
at the moment there is a lot of well there is I'd say a lot but there was an issue obviously
with fraud in Ukraine occasionally with real estate transactions so I have another
video about the most common scams up above in the car down below in the description just be
careful of that it's not going to be that crazy different in terms of price and I'll just give
you a little bit of a sample of some of the real estate properties apartments here in Kyiv
down in Odesa I had been working that before the invasion before there's the tension actually
pre-invasion in Ukraine it'll give you a bit of a sample about you know the types of properties that
my clients were buying here and guys who are moving here to Ukraine one is you know
deaths in historic building that's gonna be pretty similar to what you get around here
if you look around nice town houses and also in Kyiv in a new building that we were looking at
a newer building not historic building that's in another area called Olimpinski so there are two
that I'll give you a little bit sample of that I had been filming before the invasion
Wow oh
my god this does not look like the almost it's obviously the same building but what a difference
Maybe you already have a property you're wondering about airbnb prices they are about half what
they would normally run at that's to be expected because obviously there are very few international
tourists coming to Ukraine at the moment normally we'd be thronged here in Kyiv at this time of year
whilst there are plenty of people out the street very few of them are speaking
in English or another foreign language so very few foreign tourists that's to be expected
and of course we would assume that we'll go back to normal going forward but for now definitely
rental prices are about half I would say for short-term rentals so now some of the
factors that are going to determine whether the prices are increasing or decreasing here
in Ukraine due to the invasion are the fact that sadly many
Ukrainian cities in the east have been destroyed and especially the stock of
apartments and houses of course has been very badly depleted you've probably seen the images
from Mariupol for example where it looks like about yeah maybe 60 to 90 percent of the housing
is damaged will have to be leveled also there's smaller cities like Volnovakha Mariupol had a
population about 450,000 pre-war Volnovakha about a hundred thousand Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk
that was also a conurbation about 250,000 people so those people will need new homes and whilst
many people have gone abroad we have about 5 million refugees who have left Ukraine many women
and children there's actually another five to six million people who are internally displaced here
in Ukraine and they will need places to live so obviously that would put a pressure housing maybe
a slight that would be an increasing factor as I mentioned then we got the people who've left
so that's obviously a factor that's going to drive down prices in theory I mentioned that foreign
foreign tourists are not here well obviously foreign investors are not going to be coming to
buy property here like they were pre-invasion for a while and also people who are planning
to relocate probably have postponed those points thank you obviously for an investment downs less people
investing in the property especially but in particular I think in the center
of Kyiv because there were a lot of foreigners who were moving here I was helping many of them
who were my clients so that's going to be a factor obviously that pushes down the price
the World Bank another factor the World Bank has predicted that the Ukrainian economy will contract
from between 40 to 50 percent in [comparison to] 2021 due to the invasion and that's of course another factor
that's going to have a big influence on how much money people have to
pay for property and maybe yeah you're going to have as a corollary to that many Ukrainians who
are going to sell in particular say if they have a second or third property that was kind of like
a savings account they may decide now is the time to offload that and get their hands on some cash
also you could say that many Ukrainians might decide that they want to move abroad permanently
and not come back maybe set up businesses abroad especially from the areas that have
been devastated that will mean again that there will be a downward factor on the price of property
so in the two years three years prior to the invasion the price probably have been slowly
increasing here in Ukraine on average and I would say now when I look at the discounts that you can
get for people who are trying to sell property it's probably about a discount of 20 to 30 percent
that would bring it back down to say pre-covid prices yeah around that late 2019
2020 prices more or less and I guess the big question for a lot of people who are considering
taking the risk on investing in property in Ukraine because it is discounted compared to before
is going to be how long will the the war last how bad will it be will cities like Kyiv
or somewhere else that you think you investing in like Odesa be leveled or seized by Russia and whilst
I don't think that's going to happen if the war were to drag on past the autumn then probably we
would see prices decline further if it runs into next year in particular if the conflict were to
end sooner than that um you know by the end of autumn then possibly prices will not decrease
dramatically further I also expect it will be a big kind of like Ukrainian version of
the Marshall Plan post-World War 2 there will be a lot of foreign money that will be invested to rebuild
Ukraine afterwards rebuild its infrastructure so that was something that maybe would indicate that
going forward that prices would increase in a few years again when the economy recovers so that is
my little spiel my little video today about buying property potentially here in Ukraine if you see
something that's 80% off in the center of Kyiv as I was talking to my lawyer helps me with these
investments the other day he saw something like that and it turned out to be a scam it looks like
so yeah just be wary of that something is too good to be true then possibly it isn't and in any case
if you have more questions you want some bespoke advice about what's going on here in Ukraine
down below you have a link to my consulting so I'm going to leave it at that and bid you
a гарного вечора which is have a lovely evening Слава Україні! Героям слава! Ciao-ciao from Kyiv, Ukraine