– It’s expensive here! It is not so easy to be a first-time buyer here, so to speak. Hoem stands in one of the capital’s old working-class residential areas on Grünerløkka in central Oslo. To live in the middle of cafes, shops and restaurants, home buyers have to shell out large sums even for small apartments: In the Grünerløkka district, house prices have risen by 287 per cent since 2003, Eiendom Norge’s figures show. That is far more than the increase in wages in the same period. HOUSING CRISIS: House prices in the capital, not least in the district of Grünerløkka, have risen sharply for several decades. Photo: Nadir Alam – Here in Oslo, a nurse can buy 2.4 per cent of the homes in the city centre. This means that you push quite a few groups out of the cities, and that there is a big difference between generations, says Hoem. Very high house prices and a demanding rental market mean that Hoem now wants to lift the housing policy internally in the Labor Party before the 2025 election. The AUF leader is on Ap’s program committee and thus sits around the table when the party has to chisel out the policy that will give an election victory in a year and a half. Taxes harder It is known that AUF wants a national property tax, in the hope of slowing price growth. Now the youth party will also remove a tax benefit for those who own secondary homes. These are the homes that private individuals often buy with a view to renting out. This will be done by removing the interest deduction, which means that it will be more expensive to borrow money to buy rental properties. AUF will also ensure that larger, professional players are taxed in a similar way, for example by companies not being able to get interest deductions for loans with mortgages on housing. – We believe that it should not be as profitable as it is today to own more homes. This could mean that more homes come up for sale, says Hoem. – If you tax harder, won’t that lead to fewer rental properties? – Yes, and then we may also have to think about how to build a rental market for the future. With the exception of student housing, it is largely left to the market, says the AUF leader. Hoem’s list of measures also states that more homes must be built faster than today, by reducing the processing time. And the AUF top will use the Husbanken more actively. – We want to double the allocations to the Housing Bank. We are talking about almost NOK 30 billion, so that you can actually give start-up loans to young people who do not have the opportunity to get loans elsewhere. In order to “clean up the rental market”, Hoem will also have a rental supervision “which will function a bit like the labor inspectorate,” with the power to fine unscrupulous landlords. AUF also brings a proposal to establish rental collectives, which will be able to negotiate rental prices, into Ap’s program work. – Badly thought-out NTNU professor Are Oust supports AUF on one point: More homes must be built if house prices are to fall, so that more people can enter the housing market. – The proposal to build more homes is great. The others will probably create major challenges and seem a little poorly thought out, sums up the housing expert. The proposal to cut the interest deduction on secondary homes is unlikely to be implemented in practice, fears Oust. – If you have an income that you tax, you usually also get a deduction for the corresponding cost, he says – and fears that a change could open the way for tax adjustment and tax distortion. HOUSING RESEARCHER: Professor Are Oust at NTNU. Photo: NTNU – In addition, it will lead to higher rental prices, and we may run the risk that the rental market simply becomes so small that it stops working the way we want. The proposal to increase the limits of the Housing Bank also has some dilemmas, the professor points out. – Who is to get, and who is not to get? Who do we help? We help some, we punish the others. There will be no more housing from this. Nor are the ideas about rental supervision and collective bargaining necessarily simple: – It is possible to create a rental supervision. The question is what tasks it will have, and whether it will lead to an improvement. But if there is an improvement in condition, for example, it will probably push the price up. – When it comes to them negotiating, we have to have a negotiation partner. And who will it be in Norway, when we almost only have small landlords? Laws seized Housing Minister Erling Sande (Sp) will submit a report to the Storting with a new housing policy before Easter. – It is a demanding situation now. Too few homes are being built, and we see that there is high pressure and rising prices on the rental market. It is necessary to strengthen efforts in housing policy, he says to news. He points out that the government has strengthened Husbanken with NOK 10 billion in lending frameworks. HOUSING MINISTER: Erling Sande from the Center Party. Photo: Nils Fridtjof Skumsvoll – Today it takes too long to plan new homes, says Sande. The Minister will not comment on the AUF proposal to scrap the interest deduction on secondary homes. But in the past the finance minister flatly refused to increase taxation on housing. – The measures we are taking must make more homes available, either for rent or for ownership. Then we have to simplify and not complicate things for those who want to rent out, or those who want to build out, says Sande.
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Here prices have tripled in 20 years – news Norway – Overview of news from various parts of the country
