By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY

Jdemander à Peter Falatyn, un Américain vivant à Moscou. Prix de l'immobilier ont doublé dans la dernière année, le poussant hors de l'appartement, il a été la location au cours des dernières six ans et demi. «Je me déplace parce que, selon le propriétaire et son agent immobilier, il ya eu un hoquet de marché," at-il dit.

The basic brick building is one of the more reasonably priced in the chic Moscow neighborhood known as Patriarch’s Pond. Some former Heroes — an honorary title often given to Communist Party officials — still own apartments in the building and, like many owners in Moscow, have found themselves sitting on gold mines and decided to sell, sometimes forcing out renters like Mr. Falatyn.

Evans (www.evans.ru), a real estate agency with offices just two blocks away, says two apartments in Mr. Falatyn’s building are for sale. One is the same size as his — 74 square meters, or almost 797 square feet — and is listed at $792,000. (He initially paid $1,200 a month, but that was increased to $1,700 a month last year.)

Selon Karina Kheifetz, one of Evans’s les deux associers, prix annonce à Moscou aujourd'hui en moyenne un peu plus de $ 5,000 par mètre carré, soit environ $ 463 par pied carré. Dans le quartier du patriarche Pond, ils sont un minimum de 10.000 $ le mètre carré, soit près de $ 926 par pied carré.

At the very top of the market, Ms. Kheifetz said, some apartments are selling for as much as $30,000 per square meter, or almost $2,780 per square foot.

Dans l'édifice de M. Falatyn, elle a ajouté, les prix sont 10.700 $ le mètre carré, ou 990 $ le pied carré. Et comme pour les locations de là, appartements de trois pièces vont maintenant de 3000 $ à $ 4200 par mois. (immobilier ici est habituellement prix et payés en dollars, même si d'euros sont parfois utilisés. Et puisque chambres dans des appartements de l'époque communiste bondés étaient presque toujours à usages multiples, des appartements en Russie sont classés par le nombre total de chambres, pas le nombre de chambres .)

The unsettled political and investment climate in Russia might decrease future demand for real estate in Moscow somewhat, but there would have to be a drastic change in supply and demand to bring the prices down significantly, Ms. Kheifetz wrote by e-mail from New York, where Evans has just opened an office in SoHo.

“Even though it sounds crazy, it is a fact,” she wrote. “The reasons for the hike in property prices are the rapid growth in demand (more cash and mortgage money available), lack of other trustworthy investment instruments and extremely limited supply of housing.”

Muscovites generally want to trade up from their cramped Communist-era quarters, where three generations often shared one tiny apartment. And just about anyone in Russia who has profited from the booming oil and commodities market wants a piece of Moscow real estate, either as a home or an investment.

Foreigner investors, Ms. Kheifetz said, have little impact on the market. “Their number is small and is shrinking due to the growing prices which increase the barriers to entry,” she said. “They do, however, exert a larger influence in special segments such as prerevolutionary buildings in the center of Moscow.”

L'emplacement est tout à Moscou. Ainsi, dans certains districts, même en ce qui concerne des bâtiments soviétiques préfabriqués avec des façades qui ressemblent à des carreaux de salle de bains peuvent coûter autant que des logements haut de gamme de certains quartiers.

Additionally, neither price nor history is any guarantee of good maintenance, as Mr. Falatyn, a native of upstate New York, found when he traded up to his current three-room apartment less than a mile from the Kremlin.

“There was a horrible humidity and a smell in the building entryway” when he first moved in, he said as he sipped tea in the kitchen, adding that he was the only tenant to pursue the source of the stench.

It turned out to be a pool of sewage in the basement, the result of a burst pipe, he said. “I paid for the zhek,” he said, using the Russian acronym for the residential maintenance offices that serve each city neighborhood. “They had to clean it up and reseal the pipes.”

In Moscow, persistence and money are the keys to problem-solving. And for a foreigner like Mr. Falatyn, it helps to have a sense of humor about it all. He described the incident with a smile. After all, he got a good deal on the place, on the condition that he renovate the kitchen, which was dark and dreary, he recalled, with a Soviet Elektra brand stove and a hanging lamp that, at 6-foot-4, he kept walking into.

Those days are a distant memory now. The new kitchen’s yellow-and-blue color scheme is reflected in everything from the cabinets and vases to a flower motif that Mr. Falatyn recently stenciled on the wall. In the apartment, plants vie for space with photos of friends and family, and souvenirs from his travels across the former Soviet Union, like Tajik knives and Georgian goat horns used for drinking wine.

Rather than overhauling the bathroom, with its shocking green tiles that were no doubt the height of chic in the 1970s, he decided to complement their color with his choice of towels and even soap.

Lining the hallway wall are prints from his favorite Parisian shop, to remind him why he has not bought an apartment in Moscow. “In the Sixth and Seventh Districts in Paris, in Saint Michel and Saint Germain, you can buy an apartment for 10,000 to 12,000 euros a square meter,” or about $1,200 to $1,445 a square foot, he said. “It will be in a beautiful building, overlooking parks.

“You don’t have pools of sewage in the basement.”

Un diplômé du Massachusetts Institute of Technology avec un diplôme en commerce de l'Université de Californie à Los Angeles, M. Falatyn venu en Russie en 1993 en tant que consultant en aérospatiale, puis a travaillé pendant huit ans pour une agence inter-gouvernementales qui s'occupent de la non-prolifération des armes. A l'heure actuelle, il connaît le marché de l'immobilier à Moscou, où les bâtiments peuvent être démolis pour de nouveaux développements et les propriétaires d'appartements à gauche avec une compensation minimale. En outre, le système alambiqué de la ville de permis de séjour signifie qu'il est possible pour les anciens résidents d'un appartement à son tour et tout à coup contester une transaction immobilière, ce qui pourrait laisser un acheteur dans le froid.

Néanmoins, M. Falatyn revient sans cesse à Moscou, dont l'ineffable remorqueur qui tourne dans de nombreux expatriés résidents de longue durée. Il aime le confort et la paix remarquable et le calme de sa rue, qui se situe à peine à un bloc de l'artère centrale bruyante de Moscou, Ulitsa Tverskaya, et des équipements comme un supermarché de 24 heures.

“I don’t know another city in the world where you can live so close to the center and have it be so quiet,” he said.

(The Patriarch’s Pond neighborhood is the setting for the opening scene in Mikhail Bulgakov’s mystical novel “The Master and Margarita” — and one of its main themes, along with Jesus’s crucifixion, is the city’s housing woes during the early Soviet era.)

But now, after nearly 14 years in the city, Mr. Falatyn is packing up and will room with a friend until he settles into a new job and decides what to do.

Il n'est pas seulb> Ms. Kheifetz said. “Une de nos clients, qui s'est appuyé sur le revenu de location d'un petit appartement de Moscou pendant un certain temps, il envisage de commencer la négociation pour une villa en Italie, où elle peut se permettre au niveau actuel des prix.”