New numbers emerged this week that indicate the housing market is doing better than expected in Norway, even after months of interest rate increases. Many analysts had expected prices would fall through the rest of the year, but they didn’t.
It takes longer to sell homes, and there’s lots of inventory on the market, but actual sale prices in November fell only an average of 1.3 percent. When corrected for seasonal variations, average prices actually rose by 0.1 percent.
“That means the housing market is holding up much better than Norges Bank (Norway’s central bank) had predicted,” Kari Due-Andresen, chief economist at Akershus Eiendom, told business news service E24.
Due-Andersen and many others are now waiting to see what the central bank does next week, when it holds its last interest rate meeting of the year. Many have been expecting another quarter-point rise in the bank’s policy rate, since such a hike was avoided last month, but now that’s not so sure.
NewsinEnglish.no staff
