Oslo’s residential real estate market was still hot in otherwise chilly January, with four out of five homes up for sale attracting bids well over their asking prices. Fully 106 of the 108 homes on the market during the third week of January sold after just one showing.
“There are lots of showings and bids for almost everything,” Terje Halvorsen, chief executive of DNB Eiendom, told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) last week. “The activity in Oslo is extra strong.”
Two- to three-room apartments sized at around 70 square meters (700 square feet) are the most sought-after “and generally all are sold over appraisal, normally by NOK 200,000- to 600,000 in Oslo,” Halvorsen said.
He said that 83 percent of homes sold in Bergen also went for prices higher than appraisal, along with 57 percent in Trondheim and 54 in Stavanger.
One of the most extreme cases in Oslo involved a duplex in the fashionable neighbourhood of Vinderen. The 149-square-meter (nearly 1,500-square-foot) home built in 1929 needed “quite a bit” of remodeling, according to its real estate agent, but around 60 people turned up for its open house and bidding was brisk. After being appraised at NOK 7.9 million, it sold for NOK 11 million (USD 1.4 million).
“The sellers were shocked, and so was I,” real estate broker Sisilie Berg of Privatmegleren told DN. She said the sellers were “more than satisfied,” and hastened to add that the buyers were as well
newsinenglish.no staff
