Low interest rates and a serious lack of student housing has led to a record number of Danish parents purchasing housing for their children, according to a new survey by the real estate company Home.
The survey, complied on behalf of Metroxpress newspaper, showed that during the first seven months of 2015, 7.4 percent more apartments were sold as parental purchases compared to the same period last year. Since 2011, there has been a 56 percent increase in the annual rate.
“We’ve never seen so many parental purchases as we are seeing at the moment,” Mads Ellegaard, a spokesperson from Home, told Metroxpress.
“August is normally the prime season for parental purchases, but they’ve been strong all year.”
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Years in advance
The development has been noted by Nykredit bank, which said that parental purchases amount to 25 percent of all apartment sales they are involved with.
“We’ve had cases of parents buying apartments despite their children being relatively little. They will then rent them out until the kids are old enough to move in,” said Kim Pauli, the head of communication at real estate agency Nybolig.
“They buy them years in advance to ensure their kids have student housing when they reach that age.”
In 2014, about 2,500 apartments were sold as parental purchases nationwide.
