The financing model for residential construction has changed fundamentally since 2022, with state and municipal programs now accounting for the bulk of comfort-class housing sales, Perfect Group CEO Oleksiy Koval said.
"Ukraine's investment and construction model is fundamentally different from the Western one, where developers work with borrowed money. Over there, developers have various options — go to a bank and borrow at 5%, or turn to non-bank institutions, insurance companies, pension funds. Ukrainian developers, before 2022, operated with their own money and, to a large extent, money from the public. That was an understandable model. The proportions have now changed significantly. Before 2022, developers put in about 10% of resources and the public 90%; now you have to invest up to 60% of your own money in a project before you can even attract buyers' money," he said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
Organic demand — sales financed purely by buyers' own money — was noticeable on the market in 2024-2025, when it accounted for more than 60%, but a significant share of sales are now driven by state and municipal programs, he said.
"Most of what's selling is comfort-class housing, and a large share of it thanks to state and municipal programs. As soon as funding is issued twice a year under the '50/50' program, almost all available apartments get bought up immediately. Toward the end of the year, police and the State Emergency Service typically make purchases through tenders. That's how the whole comfort-class segment gets absorbed," Koval said.
In business-class projects, construction is sustained by one-off deals, he said. "For example, there can be almost no sales for a month, and then the next month, say, someone buys two 300-square-meter penthouses, and that keeps construction going."
Koval said he believes Ukraine's market will eventually move toward project financing practices similar to those in EU countries. "There isn't a developer today who would say they're not ready to work transparently. We've long been ready and are already doing it. Give us balanced regulation, transparent rules of the game, access to credit — and we're ready to deliver on any task, of any scale and complexity," he said.
