From MvdR via email:
From FB group Very Finnish Problems
“it is still heaven/ a dream compared to Iceland. Here rental housing is non -existant, that little that there is everyone is fighting for, there are no regulations or rent caps and its all privately owned so he who can pay the most rent gets the housing. Housing owners are really greedy and rents go up like 75 000 isk a month, and a lot of people are on the street/homeless because of this. It is totally crazy, the rent value has no tie to anything else and people are paying like 80-90% of their income just for rent. Its like the wild west.”
Presumably there are some restrictions upon new builds – as MvdR posits.
From elsewhere, this puts it into some perspective:
> The average rent per m^2 is 11.3 euro in Stockholm and 19.5 euro in Helsinki.
With the difference being that 19.5 EUR would give me a square meter in Helsinki tomorrow. 11.3 EUR doesn’t give me anything in Stockholm for the next decade. ≈ 30 EUR give me a second hand semi-short term contract in Stockholm.
Prices are prices and it’s not necessarily the official one that bites.
“a lot of people are on the street/homeless because of this. ”
I find the idea of hordes of homeless Icelanders pushing shopping trolleys around Reykjavik hard to believe.
Icelanders that I gave met have told me that there is a permanent housing crisis there. Not helped by their… liberal… attitudes to permanent relationships.
Why Helsinki? I know someone who owns a private island in Finland. It cost them around €80,000.
There are some downsides for sure, basic utilities among them, but still…
Everywhere there is rent control, sooner or later there rise unofficial incentives: “key money”, extra deposits, etc.
The 11.3 EUR is not the price if it doesn’t get you anything.
BiFR
Nothing that can’t be solved by with a shovel and some 4″ pladtic piping,I’m sure. A Calor Gas bottle ways 15 kilos, four of them could go a long eay…