Housing Boom in Post-Crisis Kyiv: Growth Without Finance

Abstract

This article analyses the housing boom which occurred in Kyiv between 2015 and 2019. Despite the overall economic decline, the real estate sector started booming in 2015 in big Ukrainian cities, especially in Kyiv. In order to address this issue, the research question was posed: what were the mechanisms of the housing growth in big Ukrainian cities between 2015 and 2019 in the absence of the direct foreign investment into the mortgage market. The article concludes that the growth was fueled by the extraction from such groups as workers of international companies and Ukrainian migrants working abroad. This process strengthened the positions of the local urban actors but deepened the center-periphery gap between the Ukrainian and global economies.