Commercial real estate experts call the price quite marketable, but the time for sale is not suitable, investor interest in the shopping center is now low.
“Price negotiating is possible”
According to Delovoy Peterburg, announcements of the sale of two shopping centers are posted on the Avito service. Thus, Universam Diana LLC is selling the shopping center of the same name (area – 14.3 thousand square meters, asking price – 1.8 billion rubles) at 24 Karavaevskaya Street, bldg. 1, next to the Rybatskoe metro station. According to RBC Company, the Salaev family owns this legal entity. The share of ex-deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg Alexander Salaev 63.86%, his wife Elena Shtabinskaya – 23.68%, daughter Diana Salaeva – 12.46%
The second sold shopping center is located in the future capital of the Leningrad region – Gatchina. Its area is 35.4 thousand square meters. m., the requested cost is 2.16 billion rubles. Owns the LEON+ LLC complex, which is 100% owned by Elena Shtabinskaya. She acquired this shopping center in 2021 from NEK Gatchina LLC (liquidated in 2022). Both complexes are pledged to Sberbank.
By phone, the representative of the seller, Natalia, confirmed the sale of both complexes to the publication. Moreover, there are many options for buying – from the acquisition of legal entities that own complexes, to buildings separately. Price negotiating is possible. The phone number by which Natalia can be contacted was identified by the Getcontact service as the phone number of Alexander Salaev. The ex-deputy himself was not available for conversation.
“Projects are selling slowly”
It is unlikely that it will be possible to quickly sell shopping centers that are not in the top places, market participants say. “Theoretically, there may be interest, but in practice, such objects are now being sold slowly, including because of the high cost and the need to attract a loan. Investors who now want to invest in real estate have smaller amounts. The current price is in the market. But if the operating performance does not provide a payback of 8-10 years, I do not believe in a quick deal,” says Andrey Boykov, managing partner of Rusland SP.
Now, due to the departure of foreign brands and changes in supply chains, the trading segment is under pressure, which is reflected in the behavior of professional investors. “To avoid the risks of uncertainty, they put the activity on pause. Investors’ low interest in retail facilities will continue until a certain stability is achieved – a decrease in inflation and the key rate, ”says Sergey Duvanov, Project Manager at the Investment Department of NF Group in St. Petersburg.
Foreign assets
Alexander Salaev was a member of the Legislative Assembly from United Russia of two convocations – the 4th and 5th. As RBC Petersburg previously wrote, in 2013 Salaev wrote a statement on early resignation. The fact is that at that time a ban was introduced for deputies to own foreign assets. His official income statement included not only a land plot in Russia with an area of 40 thousand square meters. m and half of the apartment 283.1 sq. m., but also a plot in Finland (1.7 thousand sq. m.) with a garage and a bathhouse. The deputy’s wife, according to the documents, owned a land plot (836.4 sq. m.) and a house (657.9 sq. m.) in Spain.
During his parliamentary career, Alexander Salaev became famous as a “truant deputy”, during his entire work he attended meetings of the Legislative Assembly only a few times. In 2021, Alexander Salaev tried to be elected again and ran for the Legislative Assembly in single-mandate constituency No. 15 as an independent candidate. The election campaign turned out to be scandalous: Yury Kulikov, a candidate from the New People party, filed a lawsuit in order to remove Salaev from the elections for foreign accounts and his alleged citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis (Salaev himself denied this). As a result, he failed to become a deputy again.
