Sochi chalet prices grew at 4% between June 2013 and June 2014, faster than in Gstaad and not far behind Davos, according to Knight Frank’s Prime Ski Property Index. Accomodation in the Russian resort is also costlier in real terms today, with a 1.7k m² chalet being put on the amrket for $4.86m while a 1.98k m² square meter chalet in Gstaad wasup for sale at $3.34m. The price reflects the enormous investment that went in to last year’s Winter Olympics, which saw $50bn being spent on updating the resort’s roads, utilities and winter sports facilities. Unlike Gstaad and other European ski resorts, however, Sochi’s chalets have been exclusively bought up by domestic Russian buyers and has become a high-profile resort for the nation’s elite, with even President Vladimir Putin using a dacha in the region. Before Russia’s economic downturn and the devaluation of the rouble made it less affordable to them, Russians accounted for 17% of global demand for ski resort properties, 61% of which are in Europe. Around 50% t of buyers at Carre Blanc, a new development in the French ski resort of Courchevel, were Russian according Knight Frank’s Marina Kuzmina.
Sochi came in at 11th place in the index; the three resorts with the fastest growing property prices in the 12-month period covered by the report were New Zealand’s Queenstown, Aspen and Vail (both in the US.) The Moscow Times