If you’re looking to finally buy that idyllic Danish summerhouse, maybe now is the time.
Jyllands-Posten reports that vacation home prices are 27 percent lower on average than before the housing market crash.
The rest of the housing market, however, is doing better, especially around the big cities. Prices of single-family homes and townhouses grew in half of the Danish municipalities, while prices of apartments in Aarhus and Copenhagen rose quickly.
“There are grounds for concern in the vacation home market,” Joachim Borg Kristensen, a housing economist with Nykredit, tells Jyllands-Posten. “Prices have fallen drastically and we will have to wait for a turn-around. The growth in the market of ‘year-round’ homes will rub off on holiday homes, but with a delay.”
Weathering the storm
Four out of ten summerhouses in the country have been for sale for over a year, and while some houses have sold in a matter of months, others have been on the market for up to eight years.
Part of the reason behind the slowing market is that summerhouse owners have been slow to cut prices and have chosen to weather the storm by renting out the houses in the summer until prices start increasing.
“The summerhouse as the Danish leisure institution is being threatened by cheap charter trips,” Curt Liliegreen, the chief secretary for Boligøkonomisk Videncenter (Housing Economic Information Centre), tells Jyllands-Posten.
In 2014 there was an eight percent increase in the sale of summerhouses. It is anticipated that the market will continue to have a slight increase in 2015, however Nykredit, Realkredit Danmark and Nordea Kredit remain skeptical of any dramatic change.
