So far this year, house prices have risen by 6.1 percent.

The average price of a home in Norway was NOK 4,745,787 at the end of February.

- House prices rose by 1.6 percent in February, which gave a strong seasonally adjusted increase of 0.9 percent. There is strong growth in house prices in almost all areas in Norway now, and house price developments in the first months of the year exceed even the most ambitious forecasts at the start of the year, says CEO Henning Lauridsen of Eiendom Norge.

- The strong development is probably about the fact that a pent-up housing and moving demand built up during the high season, and now all the ketchup is coming out of the bottle, something that is clear from the crazy volumes in the second-hand market.

- Hopefully, the strong demand in the second-hand market will cause new home sales to pick up so that we can get house construction up from the historical low level now. But even if that were to happen, 2025 and 2026 are already lost, as what will be completed in the future is what was sold two years ago, he says.

Record volumes also in February

In February, 8,263 homes were sold in Norway, which is 19.3 percent more than in the corresponding month in 2024.

So far this year, 16,791 homes have been sold in Norway, which is 22.4 percent more than in the same period last year.

In February, 8,088 homes were put up for sale in Norway, which is 17.5 percent more than in the same month in 2024.

So far this year, 15,586 have been put up for sale, which is 21.8 percent more than in the same period last year.

- Similar to January, there are both a record number of homes sold and far more new second-hand homes on the market. There have never been anywhere near as many second-hand homes sold in both February and the first two months of the year as in 2025, says Lauridsen.

It took an average of 65 days to sell a home in February, down from 69 days in January.

Bergen had the shortest sales time with 23 days. Tromsø had the longest sales time with 115 days.

Strongest in Kristiansand and weakest in Porsgrunn

Kristiansand had the strongest seasonally adjusted price development in February with a seasonally adjusted increase of 2 percent.

Porsgrunn/Skien had the weakest seasonally adjusted price development in February with a decrease of 0.8 percent.

Stavanger and the surrounding area have the largest growth so far in 2025 with an increase of 9.5 percent. Trondheim has the weakest development this year with an increase of 4.3 percent.

- There are also large differences in housing price development in February and the trend from 2024 continues. There is record-breaking development along the coast from Bergen to Kristiansand, and in most other areas of Norway there is growth in housing prices in line with our forecast for 2025. A forecast that currently appears to be too moderate, says Lauridsen.

Housing construction is about political will

In February, Norway got a new Minister of Housing in the Minister of Local Government and District Affairs, Kjersti Stenseng (Labour Party).

- Stenseng has so far been offensive by inviting us to consult on what should be done to remedy the housing crisis. And now we must move from words to action, because in the last 15 years there have been a number of studies on how to increase housing construction, while the opposite has happened.

- This illustrates that housing construction is a question of political will, because much is possible for municipalities within the current regime, which we have seen in Trondheim, among other places, with large housing construction and moderate housing and rental price developments over time. But that assumes that the municipalities have incentives to regulate for growth and housing construction, for example through the municipalities' revenue system.

- When it comes to the state, the government must coordinate it. Because despite the fact that it says in the Hurdal Platform from 2021 that the government should not introduce requirements that increase construction costs, the opposite is happening, most recently with proposals for requirements for shelters and emission-free construction sites from the Ministry of Justice and the Environment Agency. If the government actually wants to build 130,000 homes by 2030, it must also prioritize it through its policy, Lauridsen concludes.