Luxury rubble: Real estate prices in Russian-occupied Donbas skyrocket despite widespread destruction, shelling, and water shortages
Under a listing for a three-room apartment in Luhansk, commenters expressed disbelief: “Shells are flying there, and they’re selling apartments for 11 million ($137,000). They’ve lost their minds. Better to buy in Volgograd, at least there’s water.”
Despite the ongoing fighting and destruction in the Russian-occupied territories of Donbas, housing prices have risen 30% to 40% over the past five years and continue to climb. Both sales and rentals are becoming more expensive. According to data from July 2025, a one-room apartment in Donetsk cost an average of 2.9 million rubles ($35,000), and the cheapest apartment in Luhansk (an unrenovated one-room unit on the first floor of a Khrushchev-era building) cost 2.5 million rubles ($30,000). By early August, the average price of a one-room apartment in Melitopol had risen to 3.8 million rubles ($46,000), while in Berdiansk it reached 3 million rubles ($36,000).
Luhansk real-estate agent Ihor Chernyshev, head of the Bastion real-estate agency, said the local property market thrived from 2007 to 2013, the final few years in which the city was under Ukrainian control. Many people took out mortgages in 2007, and in the three years before the war, rising salaries allowed residents to buy homes with cash.
However, after pro-Russian separatists seized control of Luhansk in 2014, real-estate prices collapsed. Another agent noted that a one-room apartment worth $25,000 to $30,000 under Ukrainian administration dropped to $5,000 after the first round of fighting began.
And yet, since the start of the full-scale invasion, prices have surged sharply again. Chernyshev said that five years ago he could not sell a two-room apartment for $7,000; now that the same unit sells for about 6 million rubles (around $61,000).
“Take a zero off”
Prices in Luhansk have risen even compared with 2024. Back then, a three-room apartment — Soviet-style décor and wall carpets included — could still be bought for 3.5 million rubles ($42,000).
Commenters on real estate sites today note that such a sum might not even be enough for a property in miserable condition: “The buildings are old, there are no courtyards, the roads are destroyed, the sewage leaks, and the biggest bonus is the cockroaches. And they want 5 million for that.”