”Espoo is the home to many well-off people with families,” explains OP-Pohjola Banking Group Director Mikko Hyttinen.
The YLE survey discovered the average housing loan taken out in the metropolitan Helsinki area is around 120,000 euros.
It also showed that residents in Turku had the smallest housing loans out of Finland’s six major cities.
”The somewhat more modest development in the Turku economic region compared to Tampere and Oulu is a contributing factor. Housing prices have not risen so quickly in the area and home construction has been less,” Hyttinen adds.
Most mortgage holders pay off their loans by the time they reach retirement age. A small proportion, though, are still paying off their housing debt while in their seventies or take out a separate loan to finance maintenance work.
Last year, Statistics Finland reported three quarters of Finnish households had taken out a mortgage. The average loan was 85,600 euros.