Just as Russians can recognise the approximate date of a block of flats: is it a 'Stalin house' or a 'Khrushchev house' or a 'Brezhnev house'....? so the British can look at houses and tell you their approximate date. Anyone with a general interest in domestic architecture could probably guess correctly to within twenty years, the date of a building from 1800 onwards, by observing the materials, the proportions, the style, the details, the decorations. Typical materials depend on where in the country the house is built. Although brick is by far the commonest material for the walls, its colour will vary according to the local clays and sands, and in parts of the country the authorities still insist on using stone. Roofs may be tiled, or covered with different kinds of local slate. Flat roofs are very rare, concrete may be used for the basic frame but is otherwise despised, and wood is used for outer walls only if the owners are rich and can afford such special architecture. Your typical izba seems very exotic to us.
Because we mostly live in individual houses, we have a confusion of terms in translating to and from Russian. The English use the word house for a dwelling intended for one family. We would not describe a purpose-built block of flats as a house (although the whole building may be given a name such as 'Paradise House'). Hence dom has no exact equivalent in English. The word home is much more personal, much warmer than house: a 'home' is the place which you have created: not only its furnishings but also its atmosphere, your sense of other people who live in it, your feelings about its past as well as its present. Something of the Russian feeling about the privacy of kitchens is found in the English word home. Therefore a house, a flat, a caravan, a shed, or a castle can each be a home.
When I wrote the first version of Understanding Britain in 1991, I had to explain to my readers the concept of a 'housing market' in which houses are privately owned and are bought and sold according to the market price. At that time almost all Russians lived in municipal flats, but over twenty years you have become familiar with housing markets. Nonetheless there are differences between your situation and ours.
More than 70% of British householders own their own houses. The others live in rented accommodation, owned by the municipality (council housing) or housing associations supported by local government (about 20 %), or they rent from private landlords (about 8%).
The statement that 70% own their homes is, however, misleading because virtually all homes are bought on a mortgage which is a loan from the bank that must be paid off over a period of about 25 years. So a large proportion of the people who apparently own their homes are actually in houses owned partly by the bank. Few people who buy houses are free of mortgage payments until they are in their fifties, and many continue to pay for longer.
Suppose that you and your partner/wife/husband are aged 28 and you have been renting two rooms on the top floor (Russian third etazh) of a Victorian house for three years. You have saved some money and now you want to buy your own house in the same town. You go to the bank and find out how much the bank is prepared to lend you; the sum will be based on your incomes and prospects. You work out how much you will need for the deposit (let us say, 10% of the price of a house). Then you work out how much you can afford to pay each month for the remaining 90% of the cost plus the interest on the loan; then calculate the top price that you can afford for a house and resolve not to look at anything which is more expensive than your top price. You go to an estate agent to look at properties for sale within your price range. You visit three or four (or more) of them, and eventually decide to 'put in an offer' on a house that you like and can afford. If the sellers and you, the buyers, come to an agreement, you then return to your bank and ask for a loan so that you can pay the seller.
It is normal for the bank to require that you pay the first 10% or so of the house price. Since that is already a large sum, you need to have saved money and be able to borrow money from somewhere else - perhaps your parents. The bank will then loan you the remaining 90% of the price of the house. You will have to pay back not just the loan but also interest on the loan. Depending on the state of the economy and current inflation rates, interest can easily be as expensive as the house itself. In other words, over 25 years you may have to pay the bank twice as much as the original price. This remains common practice because almost nobody is rich enough to pay for a house in cash, directly. We do not march into the estate agent with a big roll of bank notes and buy on the spot!
So now you have your house but for the next 25 years you have to pay a substantial sum every month. For millions of home owners 'paying the mortgage' is by far the largest expense to be taken from their monthly income, after taxes of around 22% and local taxes. Sometimes it is more than income tax, perhaps as much as one-third or two-fifths of their income. Incomes also increase as people are promoted to better-paid jobs. If you, the couple who have bought this house, decide, 15 years later, that you can afford to buy a larger house, you can transfer and renegotiate the mortgage, which in practice means that you will probably add another four or five years of big monthly payments. When couples in their late fifties or early sixties eventually pay off their mortgage there is much rejoicing!
Because 25 years is such a long time during which problems may occur that no-one can foresee, most mortgage payers also have to pay insurance to cover the loan from the bank. If illness or unemployment means that you can no longer, temporarily, go on paying the mortgage, the insurance company will do so. Sometimes even that is not enough; people find that the monthly payments are too expensive; they simply do not have the money. In such cases, the bank takes back the house which it still legally owns. The defaulters find either that they are homeless or possibly that they can now rent the house from the bank. Either way they have lost ownership of the house for which they have spent years paying. The mortgage system is the only practical way of fulfilling our dream of owning our own home; most people are grateful for the system even when paying the mortgage is a struggle. But if things go wrong, the consequences can be cruel.
I have simplified the account of the procedure which usually involves solicitors, bank searches, surveys, taxes, builders, men checking the gas and electricity supplies, months of waiting and worrying, before the final papers are signed and you are given the key of the house.
Few young people who move into their first home are able to furnish it completely. They buy something here and something there. They look for cheap or second-hand furnishings; perhaps their grandparents are ready to pass on a chest of drawers or a cupboard; perhaps they see an advertisement in the local paper offering a table for a very cheap price. Creating your own home is a slow but enjoyable activity. And a great deal can be done with a paint-pot and some elementary techniques in repairing and decorating.
Among the many contrasts between Russian and British (especially English) life is the contrast between living on the ground and living in the air. In your muddy or snowy Russian climate, you enter a large building, walk up stairs or crowd into a lift, and arrive at a front door - often a forbidding front door covered with bars and locks that seems to be saying 'Keep out!' -and there you stand waiting to be let in. Inside you will take off your outer coats, your scarves, hats, gloves, maybe your inner warm clothes, your shoes, and put on slippers. Now you are in a cosy friendly warm bubble. But if your friends live in a house in England's temperate climate, you will come from the street straight to the front door (which is probably painted a bright colour and tries to say, 'Come in!'. If you are English, you are unlikely to be wearing hat and gloves but you will wear a light coat if it is winter or early spring. You wipe your shoes on a doormat, but you do not expect to change them. The house may not feel very warm. The windows are open and perhaps the first thing you do is to walk out of the back door into the back garden to admire the flowers. No matter what month, if it isn't pouring with rain, the outside is immediately available to you. You may find yourself standing around, inside or outside, because it does not make much difference. You may go with your hosts to cut some flowers to decorate the table. Children will go in and out. Cats and dogs will go in and out. If there are small children around you will be warned not to leave the front door open in case a child runs out into the road, but if this is not a problem the front and back doors will open and shut with casual regularity. Even when Russians think it is cold in Britain - say, between +3 and + 14 - the British do not expect to put their outdoor clothes on every time they go outside. Fresh air is nice, and we are not going to freeze. We find the Russian insistence on wrapping up as though the temperature is -10 when actually it is +10 very strange.