Single-family homes in Itäharju, Turku, on 28 August 2024. STT on Saturday reported that in Finland the sales of single-family homes fell last year to a new low since the immediate aftermath of the 1990s recession. (Anni Savolainen – Lehtikuva)
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LAST YEAR in Finland, fewer single-family homes were sold than ever before since 1995, Saara Saari, the acting head of registers at the National Land Survey of Finland (NLS), revealed to STT on Saturday.
Saari reminded that there was some optimism that the sales of single-family homes would pick up in 2024.
“That didn’t happen. We did see slight growth in sales volumes in the second half of the year relative to the early parts of the year and to the corresponding period in 2023,” she commented to the news agency.
The market, she added, can be divided clearly into winners and losers – into areas that are growing and developing and into areas that are losing population to growth centres.
Veera Holappa, a senior economist at Pellervo Economic Research, said the market situation can be especially challenging for people who own a single-family home in an area with a sharply shrinking population. “It may be that there won’t be enough housing demand to eventually start pushing up the values of single-family homes,” she said.
The reality is painful particularly because many have tied up effectively all their wealth in their home.
Holappa also reminded that sales statistics do not reveal how much the prices of single-family homes can fall in the worst-case scenario because at some point the owner will likely decide against selling altogether. There are no estimates of the number of single-family homes that cannot be sold at any price.
“It’s also a societal challenge if people can’t move because of this,” she said, adding that homes with minimal monetary value may end up inconveniencing the heirs.
Last year was, however, slightly better for home owners in large cities and the municipalities surrounding them than 2023, according to Holappa. The data also, though, indicate that migration to rural areas in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic-induced shift to remote and hybrid forms of working was a limited short-lived phenomenon.
“Statistics don’t support the claim that this happened. At least the change wasn’t big enough to be reflected in house sales,” she said.
Tuomas Viljamaa, the managing director of the Federation of Real Estate Agency (KVKL), told STT that Finns have misconceptions about home prices.
“In Finland, it’s a slight problem that it’s kind of been promised that the price of an owner-occupied home will increase. That kind of promise simply doesn’t hold water. The [home’s] location has a major impact here,” he stated.
He estimated that around 12,500 used single-family homes were sold in Finland in 2024.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
