Russian Typical (Soviet) Apartment: Could You Live Here?

Hi everybody and welcome to Travelling with Russell and welcome to Moscow. Welcome to a new apartment video and today I've got an apartment to show you which is in this building right behind me and it's actually listed for sale and actually there's nobody living there right now. It's essentially ready for someone to buy it and move in and I thought we'd go and have a look and I'll actually let you know the prices at the end of the video of the actual for sale price and actually what it would potentially be for rent as well because I think lots of people want to know both of those things. And I'll just briefly show you where I am so you can get a bit of an idea of the region and we'll go on head on inside and check out the apartment. Quite typically on a lot of my videos I'll do a bit of a walk around of the area where the apartment is but I'm going to get right into the meat and potatoes of the video today. So this is the building we want to go and see. This is a five level apartment building. Now some people might call it a Khrushchevka and it essentially is but this is the modern version which is the brick and concrete version. So the original five level Khrushchevkas were the panel houses and they were made of prefabricated panels and they were craned in and built very quickly and this whole district where I am here with the exception of this huge building is all the five level apartment buildings, this whole row. Now where I am here is a region called North Izmailovo. That's the suburb where we are however most people reference where we are in Moscow to the nearest metro station and the nearest metro station is a nine minute walk and it's to Shchelkovskaya metro station and it's quite a well known stop on the metro. Also it's got a major bus station there so if you want to go anywhere else in the north east of Moscow and beyond you can and it's only nine minutes if you walk to the end of the building turn right you'll be there or you could actually just follow this road all the way down and there's a path that leads you to the metro station nine minutes from right here and this is a very suburban area, very leafy I guess I'd call it now being that it's the end of winter it's not quite as green but you can imagine the shade these trees would give you in spring time, autumn time, summer time and this is the building we want to see. In case you might have noticed I've changed jackets now being that the weather has got a bit warmer I'm now on my third version of my winter jacket and I've also got a new hat my wife pulled out another hat from the cupboard so if you're watching videos at this point in time on the channel I'm changing hats almost every video. So the apartment we're going to go and see is here on the left hand side it's a two room apartment and it's 48 square meters and it has basically two rooms kitchen bathroom toilet entrance way it's got a balcony and I think you might like this apartment now of course a lot of people will grumble and mumble at the area where we are here you know it's always never beautiful right after winter ends the ground is still wet and damp the snow and ice is melted but it's not dried out yet however it's not very noisy it's nice and quiet you're a short walk to the metro station now these buildings were built back in the 1960s and these would have been a part of the social housing program in Russia and all of these would have been given to people as part of the social housing program and to bring people to certain regions in Russia so whether it was Moscow where we are here or in other cities if you might have seen one of my original apartment videos I did the family lived there for 50 years and they still live in that same apartment I'm wondering with this one if it might have seen a couple of different owners I'm not sure today I'm actually alone for the video there isn't Irina with me there isn't Yuri with me so I'm gonna do it solo today I'm very lucky I've got the pin code and key to get in it's a little bit strange coming to do my own tour without somebody to point out some things but I think I'll do a good job or I hope I will and let's go and check this place out if you're wondering what the Russian equivalent of the G wagon is this is the UAZ Patriot and it also has a little bit of a look of a jeep to it this is very much a Russian typical vehicle in Russia not too many of them in Moscow like this but definitely out in the regional areas you'll see them a lot more and of course the other thing with these older areas people didn't have cars back when these were built people would rely on public transport they would have even have worked at nearby factories and schools hospitals there is actually a school at the end of the road and there's quite a few schools within walking distance of this area here so the cars tend to find their own parking nowadays and there is always going to be a parking spot so it's not really a problem but it doesn't always look beautiful on the video and looking up now the actual apartment we want to go see is facing the other direction but you can see the balconies on the upper levels and then depending on the people that lived in them over the years so they weren't with actual enclosed balconies you can see that one up on the third level there is open and then other people have actually added them later and then actually even on the lower floor some people put the bars on the windows but it's really not necessary I don't know why they do it in Russia I can understand in other places actually I would say at some point they've probably done renovations to the roof you can see new drain pipes as well and almost every window has had replacement from what would have been original wood sash windows to plastic or fiberglass windows and they would have gone from either a double glass wood window to now what would be double glazing or triple glazing so you can see there's a little bit of a difference on the balcony build outs as you look around before I go inside let me just quickly talk about the doors and pretty much every apartment building in Russia have these heavy metal doors and then if you would have your own keys you would have a key fob that you can put here on this button or you can put a pin code in that would open the door and generally if your friends are coming you'd call the apartment number and then they'd open the door from upstairs for you and you can head on inside looks like they've got some advertising for nearby events these are Christmas events they changed the posters and let's go on inside let's make our way inside nice firm magnetic door when you come inside I will point out a few features here now depending on the videos you've watched before or if you've even seen any apartment tours in Russia mailboxes on the wall here there is actually some behind me as well these don't get used in Russia people don't get traditional mail people who do online shopping go to pickup points this one's actually not locked and the only thing you get is the letter there for the services of the building which would cover the rubbish removal and for heating have a look this would have been the original door I don't think they'll have changed this over the years even the old keypad as well the one thing that you do notice here there isn't a ramp for wheelchairs or prams which can make a little bit difficult for people with families and then have a look at this bank of radiators right here and of course these are on because of the winter weather we got another month or more at least where they'll still be on and you get nice and warm landings when you come inside so where I am here this would be effectively the ground-floor apartments but they'll call them level one in Russia and we need to go up to level three there's a little bit of information and the people to contact if you need to and then have a look there's actually an elevator in here and I'm curious if this is original or not someone needs to tell me please I've got a phone number there if you want internet installed in your apartment I'm not sure you get stuck now we need to go up to the third floor so I'm gonna do is walk up there I might just walk a few steps with you have a look at the open elevator shaft there is a mesh here but on each floor there is also the garbage chute so you can actually put your garbage and it will go down to the basement of the building and then it would get removed then I think it's normally a couple of times a week that they come depending on where you live and there's actually heating on all the floors and then these are the original wood sash windows so there's actually two frames just have a look how thick the walls are here in these older buildings they're much thicker than some of the panel buildings or even modern apartment buildings we need to go up to the third floor walking up to the third floor it's really interesting to see this elevator because I think this may be original or it may have been added later if someone who's from Russia can tell me if these were original in the 1960s they've actually got a mesh side panel so you can actually see the elevator and the cables leading up of course a couple more floors and this would be the original tiles any five-level apartment building you go to in Russia has these tiles and then of course the same colored paint scheme we need the apartment right here let's go and have a walk around the apartment shall we now just one thing I'll just point out here on the left is there's a hook right here and I wonder if anybody knows what that's for now if you're wondering so when ladies would come home with their handbag they'd hook it on there or they're shopping and then you can open the door and let yourself in now just to make it easier I've already got the door unlocked and it's just a little bit easier to film now as is customary coming into anybody's house in Russia you take your shoes off and there is also some slippers here and I'm actually going to take my slippers off and just walk in my bare feet just close the door behind me so we've got a very classic layout of a Russian apartment now one thing I will just point out as well is this double door so the traditional heavy door which if you've watched other videos this is fairly normal so there's the key lock at the bottom and there's a second deadbolt and I'm not sure why you would need so many locks but it's just a part of Russian life and then perhaps when this built apartment was originally built this would have been the original door and door handle and I don't think this has ever been changed they might have changed the lining perhaps on this side but this would be the original second door which keeps all the heat in which makes perfect sense so you've got a second door just push that closed and you're good now the layout is very typical of apartments in these five-story buildings and you've got the bathroom and toilet on the left these first two doors and then the kitchen so there's a fairly big hallway here as well and there isn't any cupboard or side table here you can put a nice big wardrobe right here and then we've got two rooms and depending on where you're from in the world watching you might call it this a one bedroom apartment because one obvious room would be a bedroom and then one obvious room would be considered a lounge room, sitting room, living room and in Russia they name it two room apartments because there's one right here which it's got a bed or a sofa in it they've got a second room right here which has got beds in it or it's just another room and then what would be the kitchen, bathroom, toilet around the corner there as you can see how spacious this entranceway is when there's no furniture here there is also Wi-Fi in the apartment and there is actually a pin code it's already activated so it's easy to use I was wondering where their electric box is and it's right behind this picture frame and this is very normal of older buildings this spaghetti junction of cables you could get actually a nice box with a cover on it but they've just put a painting over it it does exactly the same thing so I'll walk around and show you here so this apartment has been renovated I would say in the last five or ten years I'd say probably closer to five years the doors have definitely been replaced from what they ever were and then the flooring and skirting boards and more than likely the wallpaper was a hundred percent changed because in most apartments in Russia you'll have four different rooms with four different wallpapers and also this has been replaced this vinyl flooring right here if you can find some of the apartments in original condition they would have the wooden parquetry flooring which is a bit of a shame it's not here but I guess modern times we're in I've actually put the lights on because it's starting to get a little bit darker outside it's not too bad so this will be considered a bedroom now the way this apartment is built it would be really designed around a couple or a family now when this was built going back to the 1960s this would have really been a family with a mother and father and maybe two or three or four kids even so the kids would have had this room maybe bunk beds or the single beds like this and now it's kind of more like a guest room the way they've got it set up like this there is actually a split system air conditioner so for summer absolutely beautiful now this apartment does have central heating I'll kind of point it out in the other room it's behind the cupboard right there you can see it under the window yeah bookshelf this is how people in Russia dry their clothes I get asked this a hundred times on every video maybe a few hundred times because in Russia we don't have tumble dryers we have just a washing machine maybe a modern washing machine has two functions but you've got one or two of these in your apartment and you let it dry and naturally let's come on around to this main room now the way it's set up in this apartment is they've got a sofa here which actually could roll out to another bed pretty easily it's actually got the wheels on the bottom there if you can see them I've got a very big TV here now of course being that this was previously a rental and I would say this could have been some of the original furniture in here you know what you get is what you get now remember when you're buying this for sale in Russia almost everybody leaves all the furniture behind there may be some agreement with the owner and the buyer that they might want to take just the bed or just the TV or maybe the mirror and otherwise what you see in this apartment is what you move in with and get in right down to whatever the owner doesn't want to take and that's very typical and very normal and when myself and my wife bought and sold our apartment and then we bought and sold another one it was the same way and we just took our personal belongings and we knew that whatever was in the next apartment was there and then whatever we wanted to replace we could so there is a balcony here and it's completely enclosed now the windows have definitely been replaced at some point because these are the plastic double glazed windows probably see it it's probably a bit hard to see that double glazing and then for the balcony coming out here they've put new windows in at some point you can actually see where they've not finished the roof off that's very normal so we're here on the third level you can actually see outside the air-conditioning units for the next apartments so they've got a few of the kitchen cupboards here I wonder maybe maybe there's an old wardrobe at some point and they just didn't take it out so when you buy the place that's still going to be sitting here one thing they do have is I've got fly screen windows that's what we call them in Australia so you can open the windows really you don't have a lot of problem with bugs maybe in summer a little bit of flies but you really don't have too much of a bug problem as you see a couple of the other balconies so whoever lives up on the fifth level hasn't enclosed the balcony that would have been how they were and then people over the years have actually come and got the enclosed balconies done sometimes actually the people above and below do it all at the same time save a bit of money you can see the AC units just there where they pipe in and out of the apartment so yeah most people use the balcony for storage you could put a chair out here but it's not overly practical and it's great for storage and that's also the other thing you can do too this one isn't insulated while the glass windows are but it's still a little bit cooler out there so you can use it as a second fridge and with the windows being double glazed though it's a little bit warmer than it would be now the actual radiators let's move this back as much as I can these will be the original ones they've been painted a few times now and these are roasting hot they're almost you can't touch them now you can turn them off and stop the heat coming in because they're on a tap what most people do they leave them on and they just open the balcony door or the windows and let the air kind of acclimatize to the room so this would be considered the parents room now there isn't generally a traditional lounge room in apartments in Russia especially in these older ones and the kids would be in their room parents would be in their room then the kitchen is kind of the middle ground there's some very big cupboards here plenty of storage space I mean actually the other reason people don't tend to take these things with them is they're very hard to leave and move out of the apartment so there's some pillows and blankets so most people don't want to have to take it apart and pay for removal and you can understand right and then when you go to the next place it's there as well a little bit of a creek on the floor in the place I'm living at the moment we've just changed part of the flooring not the whole house but part of it and when we remove this flooring there wasn't any underlay or a foam mat to stop the squeaking and the guy that was laying ours was a little bit in shock that it was missing let's have a look at the bathroom and kitchen shall we I do hope you like these more detailed walkarounds of Russian typical apartments and I try to give you as much information as I can and I know a lot of people will tell me you know get to the point get to the main part of the video however the whole point of the video from the start was to come and show you a Russian typical apartment and show you some of the details that you might miss or even someone who might live in these apartments didn't know was part of them just to talk about the Wi-Fi here so any apartment that you go to whether you rent it buy it daily rent it will always be a Wi-Fi router that will be in the apartment it's very rare that people take them with them there's always one gonna be just sitting there and it's a fairly standard model you would have to pay the monthly fee for the internet now depending on the provider you use it's around about eight US dollars per month maybe at the highest about ten US dollars per month and that might include some of the things like movies and music and things like that for our apartment where we live in Moscow region we're paying just a little bit less than eight dollars US per month for our unlimited Wi-Fi let's head on to the kitchen now I'd say at some point this was perhaps a little bit modernized but the layout is still as it is but the fact that they've got the same wallpaper throughout the whole place just makes it feel cleaner or more simpler now any apartment that you go to you don't walk in and start talking about it especially if it's friends or family you know everybody's got their own color choice their own style their own look and that's completely fair this is the kitchen here so I'd say this was probably redone maybe five or ten years ago as well now these older apartments do have gas and then any new build apartments don't have gas so this would have been perhaps not installed initially they'll have done at some point later where they'll have gasified the whole neighborhood and it wouldn't have been there you can see again the radiator here under the window and the one thing to note too is the thickness of the walls in these buildings it's a little bit hard to see here but the sheer thickness of the walls nice view out to the garden outside now it's obviously the end of winter so it's not as beautiful and you see across the neighbors nice and peaceful nice and quiet and that's exactly what you want so this apartment has the washing machine in the kitchen now I want to ask everybody in the comments do you have a washing machine in your kitchen do you have it in the bathroom or do you have it in a separate room now in Russia very typically it's in the bathroom but with these older apartments there really isn't space so they forego one cupboard and put it there now those covers we saw on the balcony I would say at some point they were hanging here and then there would have been a more square fold-out table this looks like one of the IKEA specials right here and if you were to buy this place the washing machine microwave okay ovens not going anywhere than the fridge one thing I noticed with the fridge is it's not left opening it's right opening and you can change that but there's a little bit of food in here what's going on they've left me a snack but yeah everything is here for life sink plenty of cupboards now they don't have a extractor fan right here because a lot of people who have electric ovens would have that and it would duct out to just up here depending on the apartment it might duct out to the wall where the bathroom is or the toilet you can see it right there because it's gas they don't have one that's no problems at all and then you got a couple of plugs here so there's plenty of normal things to plug everything in and yeah there's really nothing you need to do to this place to move in and someone's gonna say it's ugly it needs fixing it needs replacing but and these doors are pretty close to brand-new not much you can break with doors so the bathroom in these older apartments two rooms so actually if I open both doors we can't quite see but there's obviously a wall in between so on the right is the toilet right there actually they're really quite spacious the toilets the way they've got them separated there's a quite a lot of room and then you've got the basics over here so bath shower sink and that's it and then heated towel rail so this oh geez that's hot so this is actually tapped into the central heating in the apartment and I don't think they've got a cutoff valve here you can get them where you can just turn them off as well so you're limited actually it's down here there you go if you want to switch it off you can thank God it does actually make the bathroom nice and toasty warm as well and of course you can dry your towels on it anybody else have a heated towel rail in a lot of the modern apartments that I might have shown you on other videos they have plug-in electric ones purely for the fact that it might be on a different wall and it's too much of a pain to run from the actual hot water pipe straight to the radiator pipe right here that's what it's called so yeah let me know what you think of this layout this is very typical if I was to go in every apartment building all the way down the street we would see this same layout and then however modern it is or however original it is that's what you've got and that would factor a lot into the price as well and where it's been modernized or where it's not or where it's got old furniture or new furniture obviously to do these repairs cost money and then how the owner wants to pay that back to themselves it would be up to them right very big bedroom actually you could if you were just a couple living here you could have a double bed in here TV on the wall and then plenty of room over here I just had to sneeze I'm sorry yeah you could have this as a very big spacious lounge room and then it would effectively be a one-bedroom flat or apartment if it was a couple without kids you'd have plenty of room or you could even do this would be the ladies room the wife and then the husband could put his desk over here and his computer and whatever else they want to do that's how my wife would have it hundred percent she wouldn't be able to tolerate having me in my one my computer in the same room it's almost looks a little out of place the TV in the apartment with the style it is and you know it's that's bigger than the TV I've got on my wall in my apartment so yeah view out the window one more time again you are looking out at the neighbors however it's very peaceful it's very quiet you don't hear anything outside anyway so let's go through the prices of the apartment shall we I've actually come on downstairs now what I'll do is I'll put up the numbers here hopefully they're readable and rather than doing it at home and doing fancy editing it's a little bit easier to do it right here while I'm in the moment and basically this apartment is for sale it's listed for sale and of course if you want to buy it you can if not you can just enjoy this tour and understand some of the differences and nuances of apartment living here in Moscow now I could be anywhere in Russia and I could find this type of five-level building the fact that we're very close to Moscow Center you can take the metro from here it's about seven or eight stops around about 20 minutes or so and you can get somewhere reasonably close to the center of Moscow again the metro station is nine minutes walk that way which is what I'll do right after ending this video I'm gonna go grab the metro and go back to Moscow myself and then go home from where I'm standing here to where I live it's about an hour and a half away by two different metros and then a suburban train but it's really quite easy to get to I've been to Shelkovskaya shopping center and metro station before I've actually done a video of the Russian analog of IKEA it's called house and that's the shop in that shopping center it's actually a 10 level shopping center it's really very fascinating I can find the link I'll put that in the video as well and of course you've got lots of neighborhood shops around as well there's supermarkets coffee shops in these older buildings they don't have businesses in the lower ground floor in the modern building like the one behind us from the beginning of the video they have a few businesses here however you've got a shopping center up the road you don't need to worry about having something immediately in your apartment building and all the people that lived here as well back 50 years ago 60 years ago they would have all gone to where the bus station is that was a very big transport hub years gone by it's not as popular and busy now because there's more travel options throughout Russia so the apartment is 48 square meters I think I've mentioned it already I'm not sure two-room apartment now that's how they call them in Russia some people would call that a one-bedroom apartment because of the way it's set up but it's a two-room apartment and you've got the kitchen bathroom toilet entryway and it was on the third level now the price will vary generally the cheapest apartments are on the ground floor or first floor there isn't a big difference between third fourth or fifth level some people like the top floor because then they've got no neighbors above them and depending on if you choose an apartment with one door or the other from when you come out of the level you might have two neighbors or one so yeah there is a tiny difference in prices but it's really not noticeable generally the prices are represented by the condition of the apartment or has it been renovated is in the original condition from when it was built and how much you may have to do to it to get it up to livable standard now the apartment that we saw you can move right in you don't have to do anything maybe you want to change some wallpaper and flooring but it's absolutely not necessary and i could happily just move right in there just need a desk for my computer and i'd be good so we've got two different pricings that i'm going to put up so firstly is the for sale price and this is important because this is what this apartment is it's listed for and that equates to 138 000 us dollars 129 000 euros 107 000 british pounds and 220 000 australian dollars i've decided to do aussie dollars in some of these tours now my hat's going a bit funny everybody keeps commenting on my hat in the videos i like this one but again it doesn't they don't fit me properly the one i left in the bus i'm so upset about so yeah i've got the conversions for your right here and it's again listed for sale i will put the map link to where this is so that you can understand where it is in the geography of moscow north is my lover district or shelkova metro station shelkovskaya i always change the words now for rent so if you would want to rent this now at the moment i think i looked on the realtor map ahead of time i think there was one listed in the next building either the left or the right of the building that we were in but these are all really the same there is no difference apart from the finishing inside and that apartment as it was if you were to get it in that building or the next one it would rent for 45 000 rubles per month which works out at exactly 500 us dollars per month 466 euros per month 387 pounds per month and 793 dollars per month and if you were to rent it from a private owner that's what you're paying the only extras that you would pay is you would pay for the internet and that's on your own to do that so you'd call the company to get it hooked up the wi-fi was already there so you just need to call the provider that's the common one for this area and you're good and i would say it's around about eight or ten dollars a month the additional payments that you would have to pay if you're renting would be for water electricity and gas because there's gas in this place now it's very difficult to give you an average of what it would be i would say realistically about 50 to 70 dollars a month it might be a little bit higher in winter and a little bit less in summer because of the heating they do put the rate up a little bit more in winter time because of the central heating in the apartment which is an absolute necessity you have it regardless of if you want it or not you can switch it off it's very difficult to give you the exact price because it's metered based on your usage on the meter that was on the wall you'd actually record the numbers and then they'll give you what you owe if you're renting it from somebody who's renting it to you they'll actually work it out for you and tell them or they would tell you what to pay them and you're good it's as simple as that so i really hope you've enjoyed this video of this apartment here in shelkovskaya district izmailovo is actually a very well-known district in moscow it's very strange that they say north south and east of that place because izmailovo you can go to a very beautiful park it's not that far away from here probably couldn't quite walk it but it's a very nice district of moscow and the prices of apartments you know some people will go this is old it should be much cheaper you know you're paying for the location you're paying for the fact you're near schools it's a very quiet place you're close to the metro there's a lot of positive things about the area i i'd love to walk nine minutes and get on the metro i'm not that fortunate where i live i've got to catch a bus 20 minutes to get to the metro on foot by nine minutes it's beautiful so yeah if you like the video give it a thumbs up i've got the camera setting on somebody's car roof so i hope they don't come out and if you want to watch another video that'll come up right now and then if you want to join me on telegram there's a link to it right here i'm not sure what video i'm going to put okay everybody i'm off on another adventure bye