Thousands of owners of holiday homes known as hytter headed back to them over the weekend, after a ban on pleasure trips aimed at limiting Corona infection was lifted. Brokers think the ban may have altered the hytte sale and purchase market.
Around 10,000 people are believed to have traveled up to the mountains around Hallingdal alone on Friday. The ban was officially lifted last Monday, so this was the first weekend that hytte-owners could re-visit their properties.
The ban was imposed so as not to overburden local health facilities, even though that was widely disputed. Many argued that anyone falling ill would more than likely simply travel home than head for local clinics.
Real estate brokers complained that the ban also hurt the real estate market for holiday homes. “It made it difficult for our brokers to help those who wanted to buy or sell hytter,” Tone Krange, chief of hytte sales for DNB Eiendom, told news service E24. Sellers feared violating state and local regulations, while buyers may have wondered whether they were really welcome in the areas where they considered buying property.
Local communities that allowed thousands of hytter to be built, only to turn away owners during the Corona crisis, must now evaluate their own prohibitions and re-evaluate their lack of preparedness in a national emergency.
“Those who ushered in the most hytte owners must now see that there’s also a cost,” Bjørn Erik Øyer of the Prognosesenter consulting firm in Oslo told news service E24.
newsinenglish.no staff
