A new survey suggests Finnish homeowners could be facing a steep rise in the cost of maintenance charges this spring.
The Finnish Real Estate Federation asked board members of housing co-operatives about their companies' financial position. Some 20 percent of respondents said that increased costs threatened their ability to pay the bills at least to some extent.
Some 4,900 responses from housing company board members were recorded in the poll, which was carried out in March 2023.
They reported increased costs for housing companies nationwide, with apartment blocks planning to raise maintenance fees by some eight percent.
The largest increases are expected to come in Helsinki and Turku, where the average raise is around 10 percent. In Jyväskylä the average expected rise was three percent and in Lahti it was four percent.
Finnish housing is often owned through companies in which every homeowner in an apartment block or a set of housing units holds shares.
The cost of defined maintenance tasks and repairs is shared collectively, with the company charging each shareholder a monthly fee, with the amount usually based on the size of the property they own.