Finland’s Housing Bubble

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By Jesse Colombo               (This article is frequently updated)

Finland’s housing bubble is a part of the overall Post-2009 Northern & Western European Housing Bubble that has inflated because of the strong investment inflows that these countries have attracted since the Global Financial Crisis due to their perceived economic safe-haven statuses, serving to further inflate these countries’ preexisting property bubbles that had expanded from the mid-1990s until 2008.

The Finnish Housing Bubble
Chart Source: GlobalPropertyGuide.com

Finnish property prices soared a dizzying 250% from the mid-1990s to 2008 [1], dipped slightly in the 2009 recession and bolted 20% higher as Finland and other Nordic countries recovered from the recession faster than their European Finland's Housing Bubble Image neighbors to the south. The Finnish property bubble is being fueled by a mortgage market in which a jaw-dropping 90% of loans are of the highly dangerous adjustable rate variety, while banks are taking a page straight out of the U.S. housing bubble as they push reverse mortgages on their elderly customers. A Finnish bank advertisement for reverse mortgages even shows a cartoon person taking a vacation paid for with cash withdrawn from an ATM that is attached to their house! [See cartoon] It is as if nobody has learned a thing from the U.S. housing bubble – the saying, “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it” could not apply to a better scenario than the Finnish housing bubble.

Finnish Housing Bubble Articles List


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