Renting

Norway is short about 200,000 housing units.  Technically this means that about 4% of their population should be homeless, as they can’t build houses fast enough for their growing population.  Rental units are few and far between as well.

The newspapers always have more ads in the “wanting to rent” column than they do in the “for rent” column as people from around Europe are flocking to Norway for employment opportunities.

The weirdest thing about renting in Norway is that apartments don’t include heating elements or light fixtures.  The unit is stripped bare.  Most apartments don’t even include a stove or refrigerator.

The laws in Norway favor the renter, not the landlord.  Any place for rent must be made available for at least a three-year period or the landlord must pay the costs of relocating their tenant if they can’t go the distance.  The only exception is if the landlord will be using their place personally, then with three month’s notice, they can ask the tenant to leave.

Rentals are extremely expensive in Norway, as is everything.  A security deposit of three month’s rent is standard.  In our town, a tiny two-bedroom apartment starts at about $1,600 a month, and goes up from there.  But ironically, if a person can afford to pay that much in rent, chances are good they can afford to buy a house, assuming they can find one, because the government has a mortgage interest subsidy program in place for all its citizens.

When we moved to Norway for a year, it took several weeks and much prayer in order to find a place to live.  It all boiled down to who we knew. 

A cousin lived down the street from three duplexes that were sitting empty because the ground under them started sinking.  The builder’s insurance company bought them shortly after they were completed.  In America, that ground would have been considered wetlands, but in Norway, it was just a neighborhood bog.  All was fine until someone down the street blasted out some hillside rock, which acted as the plug for all the water in the bog, and the ground level went down rapidly.  The houses were built on stilts so they were fine, but the insurance company hadn’t yet decided what to do with them, so there they sat, empty.

Another cousin knew the attorney working for the insurance company, so he asked if we could rent one of those “Sinking Houses” for the year we’d be in Norway.  Because of all the regulations around renting out places, the attorney thought it was easier for him if we just became “caretakers” and lived there for free.  So we did.  Hallelujah!