Should you consider buying an apartment as a reliable way to invest? Responded to the National Bank

In Minsk, the average cost per square meter exceeded the historical maximum. Some believe that buying an apartment is the only reliable way to save and increase capital. Is that really true? This question was answered by the First Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Bank Alexander Egorov on the air of the TV channel “First Information”, writes sb.by.

Aleksandr Egorov noted that the long-term Minsk meter perfectly copes with the protection of capital and overtakes inflation.

- Over the past 20 years, since 2005, the real increase in the cost of a square meter, completely cleared of inflation costs, amounted to about 125 percent. That’s an average of 4 percent of real annual returns in foreign currency – even without taking into account the money you could get from rent. And by September 2026, the supply prices in Minsk updated their historical highs, breaking through $ 2.5 thousand per square, the Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Bank emphasized.

At the same time, he noted that buying an asset at historical peaks after prolonged recoilless growth is always a colossal risk of correction.

- The market is cyclical. Let’s compare the yield of an apartment for rent in Minsk and a simple bank irrevocable deposit in Belarusian rubles. Take a standard, ready-made one-piece in Minsk with a good repair. The price of the question is about 300 thousand rubles. Having rented it, after paying a fixed tax and taking into account the month of downtime to search for tenants, you will receive about 4.5 percent per annum on your hands clean. Now let’s look at irrevocable ruble deposits. Rates today are at the level of 12-14% per annum. So the deposit overtakes the concrete. But we did not take into account the growth in the value of the asset - the apartment. In this case, with an increase in the cost of a meter in rubles by 9-10 percent per year, the yield will be equal, Alexander Egorov gave the example.

According to him, it is important to assess the risks, but potentially you can get a benefit comparable to a deposit.

- But there is a theoretically more attractive option - buying at the pit stage plus repair and resale or renting out. Many people go into this strategy. Yes, having bought the “construction” at the start for 180 thousand rubles and investing another 70 thousand in good repairs, you will get an asset of 300 thousand at the exit, spending only 250 thousand. Your capitalization, paper profit will be about 50 thousand rubles - this is plus 20 percent of the invested capital. But these are no longer passive investments, said Alexander Egorov.

He stressed that this is a full-fledged active business:

- You take on serious hidden risks: the risk of exceeding the cost of repairs, since materials can rise in price, the risk of delaying the delivery of the house by the developer (during this period, your money is frozen and does not bring income, inflation eats them up, while the deposit would already bring interest).

In addition, according to the First Deputy Chairman of the Board of the National Bank, deposit management is 15 minutes in the bank’s application on the phone, and construction control, apartment acceptance, purchase of rough materials, search for brigades is a full-fledged second job.

- You literally work off this paper profit of 20 percent with your own time and nerves, Alexander Egorov noted. Another point is diversification. The main rule of the investor is not to put all the eggs in one basket. Evaluate your personal willingness to take risks. The logical strategy today is to place part of the free capital on an irrevocable deposit in Belarusian rubles, fixing a high rate, and the rest is already invested in real estate, if you are ready to take all the risks associated with this.