So far this year, house prices have risen by 7 percent.

The average price of a home in Norway was NOK 5,112,498 at the end of May.

- House prices rose by 0.2 percent in May, which resulted in an unchanged seasonally adjusted price development. There is still a very strong housing market in the Stavanger region and house prices here have risen by a full 12.2 percent so far this year. In Oslo, price development is weaker than most, including us, imagined at the start of the year, says CEO Henning Lauridsen of Eiendom Norge.

- The record-breaking sales volume in the second-hand housing market continued in May and there is a sales record once again both in the month of May and so far this year, he says.

- In May, the growth in the number of homes listed for sale has also been greater than what has been sold and we are entering June with a large offer page. However, early summer is the peak season for buying and selling homes, so we expect much of the supply to be drained away through June, says Lauridsen.

Volumes of the times

In May, 11,701 homes were sold in Norway, which is 7.3 percent more than in the same month in 2024.

So far this year, 48,133 homes have been sold in Norway, which is 15.6 percent more than in the same period last year.

In May, 15,982 homes were listed for sale in Norway, which is 11.8 percent more than in the same month in 2024.

So far this year, 54,367 homes have been listed for sale, which is 16.6 percent more than in the same period last year.

- The growth in the number of sales has developed both in May and throughout the year, indicating that 2025 will by a good margin be the year with the highest sales in the Norwegian second-hand market ever, says Lauridsen.

It took an average of 42 days to sell a home in May, down from 47 days in April.

The shortest sales time was in Stavanger and the surrounding area with 16 days. The longest sales time was in Tromsø with 72 days.

- Selling a home in Norway is still going surprisingly fast now. This indicates an underlying strong demand in the second-hand housing market, says Lauridsen.

Strongest in Ålesund and Hamar

The strongest seasonally adjusted price development in May was in Ålesund and the surrounding area and Hamar and Stange with a seasonally adjusted increase of 1.9 and 1.1 percent, respectively.

The weakest seasonally adjusted price development in May was in Tønsberg and Færder and Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg, both with a decrease of 1.5 percent.

The largest growth so far in 2025 has been in Stavanger and the surrounding area with an increase of 12.2 percent, followed by Hamar and Stange at 11.2 and Ålesund at 10.3 percent. The weakest development this year has been in Drammen and the surrounding area and Oslo with an increase of 4.7 and 4.8 percent.

- There are also large differences in housing price developments, both in May and so far. The strong market in Stavanger and Ålesund continues. In central Eastern Norway, with the exception of Hamar, growth so far this year has been weaker than the country or, while growth in Tromsø has picked up in recent months. The volume is increasing in all parts of the country.

Housing construction is about will, not rules alone.

On June 2, a working group for the government from the Norwegian Confederation of Construction Industries (NHO Byggenæringen) submitted 73 proposals to achieve the goal of building 130,000 homes by 2030.

- What the proposals have in common is that they involve varying degrees of simplification or coordination of laws, rules, regulations, instructions, etc., says Eiendom Norge CEO Henning Lauridsen.

- We at Eiendom Norge are not opposed to simplifications, but unfortunately it is more the rule than the exception that such processes take an extremely long time.

- There is also no guarantee of the desired outcome. For example, the consideration of sufficient housing construction was included in both the purpose clause of the Planning and Building Act and the state planning guidelines in 2019. Nevertheless, the processing time and housing construction have gone the wrong way since then. This shows that housing construction is a question of political will and ability, not rules alone, he says.

- This means that the most important measure for building housing is that the municipalities actually want enough housing to be built. The way the Norwegian municipal economy has developed in recent years with large debts and explosive interest expenses, we unfortunately fear that the municipalities will deprioritize housing construction in the future, concludes Lauridsen.