House Beat

Jun 14 2009 7:30PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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By Paul Deffenbaugh

Professional Builder columnist, John Rymer, is spending June doing sales training for a home builder in Moscow. He will be posting regular updates and observations on this blog.

New Homes in Moscow are typically delivered as “partially finished.” This equates to a home in drywall stage in US. The tradition of not delivering a home totally complete goes back to the Soviet days when public housing was brought to the market in a similar fashion. A cottage industry has of “home finishers” is now part of the Russian homebuilding landscape. “Finishers” are typically one or two man companies and will often live in the home – for months at a time – while they install everything from plumbing and lighting fixtures to flooring to cabinets. It is not unusual for the work done by finishers to reach $150 per sq. ft. on mid-to-high end homes.

Established builders have found it hard to compete with finishers because they work without overhead expenses and often work in the grey market where they are paid in cash and forgo taxes. The one requirement is that homes being worked on by finishers have temporary facilities (port-a-jons) in front of the house. This makes it easy to know if the finishers are still on the job or if the house has been completed.