Russians get hands-on real-estate lessons

31 January 2007

  Russians get hands-on real-estate lessons

Slava Stepashkin, Larisa Bogdanovskaya and Alexander Ginovker, three in center from left, visit the Ruther­ford County Register of Deeds office Wednesday.

A growing real-estate mar­ket like Murfreesboro's may have a few basic lessons to teach some relatively new capitalists from the other side of the world.

A group of 11 Russian busi­ness people involved in real estate are in Murfreesboro for a two-week tour, learning about the American model of real estate.

"It's citizen-to-citizen diplomacy," said Elena Poli-akova, the facilitator and in­terpreter for the group. "There's no politicians in the middle."

The   group   was   brought  here by San Francisco-based Center for Citizen Initiatives and is being hosted by the Middle Tennessee Association of Realtors and Murfreesboro Noon Rotary Club.

Poliakova, who lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, said this is a way for Russian business people to have hands-on expe­rience of how a mature capi­talist system works.

"In Russia, the real-estate system is only 15 years old," she said.

Some basic infrastructure and systems - such as home mortgages - are just develop­ing there, Poliakova said.

"They are already practic­ing real estate, but they have significant obstacles to overcome," said MTAR Business Training Coordinator Candy Roberts. "It's a great opportu­nity for them to see how orga­nized business can flow."

Working with hosts from area businesses, the group has been taking tours of various real-estate related businesses and governmental offices. They have seen demonstra­tions of how Murfreesboro business people handle mort­gages, deeds, building per­mits, appraisals and a slew of other dealings.

On Wednesday, the group visited downtown with county and city officials, including Murfreesboro Mayor Tommy Bragg, and took a tour of gov­ernment offices such as the  Register of Deeds and the Rutherford County Planning Department.

"It's been a learning experi­ence for us too," said Crye-Leike Realtor Connie Shelton, who was helping guide the group Wednesday. "Things that we take for granted, they don't even have."

This is the fourth such group to come to Murfrees­boro in the past nine years. They arrived in town a week ago and will be here until April 28.

In that time, the group will have the chance to watch a real-estate deal from start to finish, Roberts said.