Finding a place to live in a country where you haven’t lived since childhood is not easy. Even having the language doesn’t necessarily help. One couple share their experiences.

My wife and I began following the housing market via the excellent web services provided. It didn’t take long to realise that we didn’t know the difference between Myllypuro and Kaivopuisto, and looking at the map didn’t really shed much light on things.

Added to that was that any of the houses we liked seemed to disappear in days, if not hours.

We had some moments of panic, and decided to quickly rent a home in the northern part of Vantaa and then spend some time looking around for what we wanted. Sight unseen, we rented one over the internet.

Good decision

It was a very good decision. After living there for a few weeks, we realised how different single homes were here than we were used to. The block sizes were pretty small, and their orientation defeated privacy to a great degree.

I know most Finns love yard work and gardening and fiddling about the house. Living at that very beautiful house, and engaging in these activities, I discovered a truth about myself – I wasn’t like most Finns!

My better half Natalie discovered that she didn’t like the gardening part anymore than I did, not to mention privacy problems. This helped us focus our search for a home to buy on flats.

Choosing the suburb

“Did you know that the Greater Helsinki Region has around 100 suburbs?” asked Natalie one evening. I didn’t. Not to mention that I could barely name half a dozen.

We sat down and wrote down what we wanted in a home, and in a suburb. This necessitated lengthy family discussions involving our ten year old daughter. The importance of distances to schools, shops, public transport and other information on suburbs were debated.

Professional services

The banking experience was a pleasant and easy one. We found the banks to be easy to deal with, professional and very helpful in the entire process.

One interesting note is that when one buys a flat in Finland, you are actually buying shares in the company which owns the building and the land. The shares confer certain rights to usage, but in effect the purchase is not much different than purchasing shares on the stock market.

Another issue is that in the Helsinki city area, most of the buildings are built on are leaseholds, meaning the ownership remains with the city.

Buying on the spot

People often say that things move very slowly in Finland. While this is generally true, it certainly does not apply to buying a home. We lost out on several flats by procrastinating on making an offer.

Similarly, some real estate agents operate an auction system, which to us is very suspicious. The auctions start at the listing price of the flat – something that for us was unheard of. They are acted on by replying to SMS messages on your phone.

If you make an offer for a home the price is inevitably increased by a mystery buyer participating in an auction later that day. Being from the cynical side of the school of life, I found this method of selling very unsettling, and profoundly easy to manipulate and in the end refused to deal with real estate firms using such methods.

When we found the home we wanted, we got to look at it once. On the spot, we had to make an offer and close the deal within 24 hours. We were lucky and got the right place for the right money, where we wanted it.

Risto Haataja - HT