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General Outlook on Kazakhstan’s Housing Market

By Sava Yovich, Country Manager and Architect, S+A Kazakhstan

There are several important factors that currently shape the housing market in Kazakhstan.

The country’s demographics – more than 35% of total population under the age of 20 - implies the increase in demand for bigger apartments, as middle-class families grow from having few to having many children, and young couples come of parenting age. With generally accessible mortgages for new construction, 6 out of 10 Kazakhstanis buying homes in 2023 opted for 2-bedroom apartments. Also, with roughly 17% increase in population in just 10 years, the wellbeing of children and youth has been prioritized on regulatory level. It is almost impossible nowadays to design and build collective homes in Kazakhstan, without providing a minimum index for playgrounds and sports fields.

Kazakhstan has a very different recent history than any European country, and some home-buying discussions that we wouldn’t have in Europe are very hot topics for citizens of Kazakhstan.
Let’s start from the phenomenon that is Astana, the capital city. In only 30 years, it went from being an agricultural frontier town of USSR to a fully grown capital today. Such growth didn’t leave enough space for designing residential architecture that ages well, and this is reflected on the look and feel one gets, living in the capital. In many districts that are only 10-15 years old, the feeling of enclosure and monotonous lifestyle weights substantially. Only from around 2017-2018, when the housing market became very hot, we finally started seeing the demand for quality design, and opportunities for Architects to dream big. Collective homes became increasingly contemporary-looking and with a commercial and/or community component contained in the mix. Glass doors and furnished elevator lobbies with stroller rooms replaced what was previously an opaque and uninviting entrance “cave” that existed even in middle to upper class homes.

However, transitioning from post-USSR mega-blocks with neoclassical façades, to bustling contemporary city-quarters in such a short time span, has reflected on the quality of execution. There is an attempt to create a “new wave” of architectural style over the past several years. While the post-USSR architecture is clearly characterized by beige ventilated ceramic facades combined with dark blue curtain walls, arranged in a clumsy tribute to Russian Constructivism, it is currently unclear what are the characteristics of this new emerging style. Here the aforementioned history matters – the Kazakh nation is striving to compensate for the age of stagnation that ended 33 years ago and keep pace with other developing countries. This means that nowadays, pre-1991 housing is considered almost everywhere as “slums”, while the housing built between 1991 and 2018 has already become outdated to current standards. Many buyers from Kazakh middle class are reluctant to consider investing in it. And who can blame them, when it is almost impossible to find a housing project from that period, that is human-scale and that has aged well. Therefore, buyers of new apartments will settle with several base criteria, such as properly insulated façade, secure and relatively accessible courtyard, and decent look of common areas. Hence the developers are able to sell almost anything with a bit of flashy marketing. Shell-and-core apartments are maintaining popularity, while finished apartments are available predominantly in the high-end properties.

Almaty, the country’s old capital, and the de-facto cultural capital, is a slightly different story. Almaty has heterogenous urban structure, a coherent city-planning typical of Soviet-era. It was built on a dynamic terrain, and the foothills of Tianshan mountains lie just outside the city center. Naturally, the location plays a much more important role here than it does in homogenous Astana. However, unlike Astana, there is an actual demand for housing in pre-1991 buildings, even from high-end buyers. Of course, this is only under the condition that these properties are located within the historic city center, and properly refurbished and equipped. High-end buyers are also very interested in so-called “townhouses” and “clubhouses”, since these are identified as a perfect “blend” in the market – you get your own garden and garage, but you don’t need to think about maintenance. This typology thrives in Almaty, but is somehow marginalized in Astana, due to significant differences in climate. Moreover, clubhouses are almost exclusive to South Almaty where property prices are highest in the country. Here the air quality is much better than downtown, and allowed construction density is much lower. Naturally, this kind of housing is currently affordable only for wealthier locals, and Kazakhstan has a long way to go to until regular people can own it, like we see elsewhere around the globe.

And so, the average Kazakhstanis will continue to sweep unfinished apartments from the market, until the next generation of buyers forces the trend to shift. Local architects will have to figure out what these projects are lacking when the marketing effect wears off, and how to integrate their findings in future designs. If all this is done publicly and in an engaging way, the next wave of housing may bring improvement to the cityscape and societal perceptions, and not only personal satisfaction of buying the next shiny thing.

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