Housing prices
Housing market
Cheaper homes, lower costs of living and better value for money regarding living standards have brought about a tripling of the Danish flow from Öresund DK to Öresund SE since the bridge opened in 2000. In the centre of the region, the price for both single family homes and tenant-owned apartments in Copenhagen is EUR 2 900 per square meter, while the corresponding prices in Malmö are EUR 2 400 and 1 700, respectively (3rd quarter 2009). If one decides not to buy an 80 m2 tenant-owned apartment in Malmö for EUR 134 000 and instead buys a similar apartment in Copenhagen, it would cost about EUR 228 000.
Price trends for tenant-owned housing depend on the supply and demand, and are connected with the amount of new production, the ownership forms and regulations for renting. 44 percent of all dwellings in the Öresund region are tenant-owned, most of which are on the Danish side of Öresund - 47 percent. Meanwhile on the Swedish side only 37 percent are tenant-owned dwellings.
- Copenhagen’s housing market (1 000 dwellings)
Source: Statistics Denmark, Öresund Committee’s calculations.
On the Danish side of Öresund, a radical restructuring has recently been done of ownership forms for dwellings. Trends on the housing market in Copenhagen since 1981 illustrate how common rental housing has disappeared and been replaced by so-called andelsboliger (cooperative housing). These andelsboliger are actually rental apartments that are in some way similar to the Swedish tenant-owned apartments , because the one who lives there pays a relatively large sum. The actual tenant-owned apartments only comprise 28 percent of the dwellings in Copenhagen and mainly consist of ejerlejligheder (tenant-owned apartments) of which some are subletted or are empty because of the high prices of housing.
The rest of the market for rented apartments is highly regulated. Public housing in both Denmark and Sweden has special regulations for fixed rents and tenants. The other rental apartments are not marked in the price development of the market, because rental regulations maintain a relatively low rent.
Otherwise, rents have been raised moderately by about 3-5 percent each year during the last twenty years (1). The level of rent for public housing in cities in the Capital Region of Denmark and Region Zealand in 2008 was roughly EUR 95 per square meter per year (2). The level of rent for private rental dwellings in Copenhagen was about EUR 80 per square meter in 2007. In Swedish metropolitan areas, the average rent in 2008 was EUR 95 per square meter (3).
(1) Ejendomsforeningen Danmark, Huset Jura 5/2008 and Velfærdsministeriet
(2) Landsbyggefonden
(3) Statistics Sweden
