Many new luxury apartments in Helsinki still unsold

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A number of new luxury flats recently built in Helsinki are still waiting for a buyer, as well as dozens more that are nearing completion.
      In spite of the apparent oversupply, real estate agents and builders remain confident in continued demand for prime real estate. Hundreds of new dwellings are to be built in the coming years near Helsinki's waterfront areas.
      Close to ten homes in luxury row houses built on the shore in Herttoniemi remain vacant, and work another ten is expected to finish soon.
      A building with 65 apartments is going up in the Leppäsuo area of Töölö in the centre of the city, and another building is being planned. A total of 69 new apartments are to be completed next year on the tip of the island of Lauttasaari, and more than 200 new homes are to be located in a building on the east shore of the island, some of which will go up partly on the sea.
     
The new Eiranranta area is a windy location - something that has been taken into account in the construction. Consequently, the apartments themselves are not drafty, says Hannu Savukoski, CEO of the Tarkala company, which contracted the buildings.
      Flats on the seventh floor are spacious, with 200 square metres of living space, as well as terraces in three directions, and rooms three metres high.
     
Prices of the shoreline properties start at more than EUR 7,000 per square metre on the bottom floor, increasing with each additional storey. On the highest floors the price per square metre reaches well above EUR 10,000.
      The first residents have already moved into the building next door. The three shoreline buildings erected by the construction company SRV Westerlund were completed before Christmas. Only one of the SRV apartments has remained unsold. Business has been just as brisk with the three buildings of Tarkala. However, 25 of the 57 apartments built by NCC remain unsold.
      NCC's regional director Juhani Korkiamäki nevertheless remains confident that the dwellings in the building, which is scheduled for completion in the summer, will find buyers.
      "It would be exceptional if all were sold before completion."
     
Buyers of up market dwellings want their new homes to be more complete than before.
      "It is somehow related to economic uncertainty", he says, making reference to the problems linked with the subprime loan crisis in the United States. The cyclical turnaround in Finland is also being discussed more than before.
     
A change has taken place in recent months in the market for luxury apartments, says Eljas Repo, editor in chief of Arvoasunto, a specialist publication for real estate investors.
      "Price levels have come down, and buyers have become more cautious."
      Eljas Repo says that the unsold apartments in Eiranranta are clearly speak of a change in the market for high-priced homes.
      Nina Uitto, CEO of the Kiinteistömaailma Bulevardi agency disagrees. She says that demand for prime residential real estate is on the increase.
      "If we could get them in the south of Helsinki or the centre, there would be no lack of customers", she says.
      Uitto says that old luxury apartments are selling well, and that not all of those that are available are ever advertised in public.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Luxury apartment buildings to be built on Helsinki´s Eiranranta seafront site (1.9.2005)
  Helsinki´s most expensive new housing development will go up in Eiranranta (1.3.2005)
  Bidding contest in prospect for four housing plots in fashionable Eiranranta district (31.3.2004)

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