I have an exercise machine. It’s quite ordinary, with pedals and adjustable weights. I bought it when my doctor told me that I should move my limbs more. I bought it second-hand. The owner – a well-built young man – told me that the machine was two years old, and had hardly been used, because he bought it for his wife: she used it a few times, then got sick of it. So the machine was sitting in the corner, taking up space…

Now it’s sitting in a corner in my apartment.

Around half the ads for elite housing contain promises of sport facilities.

There is a common delusion that rich people are more concerned about their health. But they are also good at counting money, so the ideas of a developer and a future home owner about what constitutes a health lifestyle may be quite different.

The general tendency is that in small apartment buildings, sport facilities are quite rare (you can expect a billiard room at best), while in large complexes of 100 apartments or more, they are a given. The ideology is different, and comes down to economics.

If you divide the cost of a sport and health complex among 100 apartments, the price is quite acceptable. Or it may not be, depending on the developer’s ambition. If this complex is oriented towards the demand, it is easier to deal with the economic side of things, but another problem arises: the social uniformity that is appreciated by well-off clients is lost.

The aspiration towards a healthy lifestyle is embodied in full in the “Novaya Zvezda” project on by the RBI holding on Pesochnaya embankment. Almost half of the total space belonging to residents – 13,000 sq.m. of 26,000 – is designed for sport and relaxation. Residents can make use of a 25-meter, 4-lane swimming pool, a sauna, cigar room, billiard room, table tennis room, fitness room, winter garden with bar, children’s play room, cosmetic and massage facilities, solarium, laundry etc. And all these facilities are already equipped and ready for use.

Since around 2005, elite and business class housing complexes have come with winter gardens, water parks, swimming pools and spa centers. A sport and relaxation component is contained in the Omega House complex on Pesochnaya embankment, “Dom u Morya”, “Favorit”, “Maximum” and “Stella Maris” on Krestovsky Island. In Stella Maris, the facilities are for residents only, while in the majority of other projects they can be used by the general public.

A characteristic example: five projects by the company Vozrozhdenie Sankt-Peterburga have a sport component; in four of them, these areas have been sold to private individuals, and not necessarily to residents of the complex. However, these owners do not have free rein in the use of the relaxation areas: like the other residents, they must obey the decisions of the board of owners. So they won’t be able to sell kebabs here.

The marketing and sales director of Vozrozhdenie Sankt-Peterburga explains: these areas are sold (or leased) more cheaply than housing areas – and more cheaply than standard commercial areas (for retail or offices) in the same building. This means it has hard to make a profit from them.

However, the wellness complex “Dom u Morya” on the Martynova embankment will be managed independently: sport and relaxation are not a bonus here, but the main attraction of the project.

A similar approach is followed by the Peterburgrekonstruktsiya firm, which has built the “Favorit” complex at 34 Krestovsky. One of the main features of the project is the private access to the water on the Malaya Nevka side. The embankment improvement project includes a jetty for small boats. The sport and health complex of around 5,000 sq.m. includes a wellness center, saunas, a water park and two cafés. The water area is 1,500 sq.m.: a zone with two water slides and a swimming pool of 25 meters with three lanes. Peterburgrekonstruktsiya decided that the complex will be open to the public, otherwise it will be too expensive for the owners – an additional $10-$12 per sq.m. per month, a considerable expense.

The head of the VIP department of Adveks, Vladimir Fyodorov, says: “There are practically no fully-fledged complexes in residential buildings. The ones that have been planned usually do not function. For many residents of an elite housing complex, fitness is a chance to go out, and socialize in a certain group. And this group may not include the neighbors.”

Rich people really do take more care of their health, says Fyodorov, but outside the complex.

A compromise is proposed in the project “Leontevsky Mys”. Here the sport complex is located in a separate building: residents get a discount, but the complex is also open to the general public.

The multi-functional complex “Olimpiiskaya derevnya”, built on Krestovsky Island by the company Evrostroi, could even be said to overdo the sporting side of things. The sport complex of the Platonov Academy of Volleyball occupies a separate building of 7,000 sq.m. Living right next door to a sport complex of this size is clearly not for everyone.

The marketing director of Adveks, Anastasia Lebedeva, notes that the sport function in an elite complex does not much influence the price as the marketability of the real-estate.

A similar situation can also be seen in the country segment. Here the type of housing establishes the conditions: people go there to relax. For 90% of buyers, a country house is their second home, for relaxation.

A direct relation can be seen in country houses: the higher the class of the village, the more sporting facilities it contains. Honka Family Club has a swimming pool, while the Nevo settlement (Kirovsky region) has modest “jogging trails”. As in the city, the amount of sport and entertainment infrastructure depends on the size of the complex: the bigger it is, the more there will be.

According to “Prigorod” magazine, of the 153 cottage settlements, there are sport facilities in 63 of them (41%): swimming pools in 6 settlements, and tennis courts in 11, and in the settlements of “Industrial and construction Alliance” in the Kurortny region (Solnechnoe and Komarovo) there are golf courses, and go carts at “Tokkari Land”.

Analysts at “Petersburgskaya Nedvizhimost” give slightly different figures. “In assessing the number of sport objects in cottage settlements (where sale has been opened), it can be said that the supply comes to 72% of the total number of settlements,” says the head of the countryside marketing department Olga Trosheva. “In 28%, there are no sport objects. The most widely represented are sport areas (34%), followed by sport clubs (11%) and tennis courts (11%). The least represented are swimming pools (7%), gyms (7%) and trails for jogging, cycling, skiing and roller-skating (2%)”.

Here an adjustment needs to be made for children: playgrounds are practically everywhere, and all “equipped with individual sport elements” (horizontal bars, parallel bars, basketball hoops). This also needs to be taken into account.

City and country projects face similar problems. The two main questions are: who pays for construction and maintenance?

The example of “Konsulskaya Derevnya” in Repino is instructive. This was one of the first closed cottage complexes: the project was first designed in 1994. However, construction only began in 2002. The project developers were particularly proud of the “Arkadia” sport and health complex with two swimming pools, a sport club, four saunas, a billiards room and tennis courts. The company Lengazteplostroi spent around $3 million on the construction and equipment of Arcadia. The 25-meter swimming pool works automatically, and heat and electricity are supplied by German diesel boilers. The Turkish bath resembles Roman thermae, and in fact the marble comes from Italy. Italian specialists had to be brought in to lay the marble. The tennis court, surrounded by a sound-isolation screen, turns into a skating rink in winter… There were certain problems with selling the houses, and the process took several years. Because of the sporting component, the developer had to put the prices up. But eventually, all 37 houses were sold. The price of 1 sq.m. was $1,000 at the time of construction, and $2,500 by the time the project was completed (in 2006). This sum includes the price of the house, the section and a percentage of the general objects (utilities, sport complex, parking area).

The Honka Family Club, which is being built in Yukki, will have just 22 home owners. And it has a full sport and health complex: a 20-meter swimming pool, a sauna, a Russian bathhouse, a relaxation room, showers and changing rooms. The public area is 1.6 hectares, with a tennis court, sport area and playground, beach zone and pier.

In the “Medovoe” settlement, architect and designer Gaetano Pesche, working for the Petrostil  company, has planned some unusual buildings. (They cannot even be compared with anything else, but this architecture does give rise to some rather playful associations). Under a glass roof there is a swimming pool, spa complex with a hydro massage zone, Finnish and Turkish bathhouses, massage and manicure rooms, a solarium, gym and billiards room…

Alexander Tsarev, chairman of the board of directors of Rossa Rakenne (exclusive distributor for Honka), says: “There is no special recipe. And the market situation is changing. There are options which are becoming essential for our clients. They are starting to be more concerned about their health – and at Honka Family Club we will build a wellness center with a swimming pool and saunas… The market follows international trends. There is a stratification of supply and a choice of clients with special requirements. When we are talking about settlements next to yacht clubs, golf clubs, equestrian schools – this is a battle for clients who are serious about their hobbies. This is a good thing, it injects new color into what I find to be the rather grey spectrum of supply of country housing”.

And it is not so important whether the client will actually use the golf course, or go horse riding. The main thing is that the sport and entertainment infrastructure provides this opportunity.

Just like the exercise machine that sits in the corner.