Housing | The abolition of the Hitas system is not a lottery win for the current owners, price regulation will continue

Hitas apartments The 30-year price regulation period will remain in spite of the abolition of the system, says the housing program manager of the city of Helsinki Hanna Dhalmann.

The only consequence of abolishing the system is that the city will no longer reserve plots for new slow production. In the case of already existing hitas apartments, however, the practices will continue unchanged – including price regulation.

With regulation, the city has tried to ensure that apartments remain affordable. In practice, there is therefore an upper limit set for the selling prices of low-rise apartments.

HS reported on Monday about the city government’s decision to abolish the criticized hitas system. This will be replaced by a set of measures, which will help to try to get affordable apartments in Helsinki in the future as well.

Regulation period is calculated from the time of completion of the housing association, and is valid for at least 30 years. Before then, the apartment cannot be sold at the free market price.

With the exception of two Helsinki housing companies, all houses completed in 2011 and after are automatically exempted from regulation after 30 years.

For housing associations older than that, the regulation ends with the city’s announcement.

The exception is if the average price per square meter of the old slow-moving housing company is lower than otherwise in the same postcode area. In that case, the housing association can apply for an exemption from the regulation from the city.

The City of Helsinki decided to abolish the criticized system on Monday. The Hitas system is a housing quality and price regulation system, the goal of which has been to provide affordable owner-occupied housing with the support of society.

The system has been criticized, for example, because it is not able to allocate support effectively to those who really need it. There have also been people with good incomes among the owners of Hitas apartments, and some of the apartments have ended up as investment apartments.

Correction on June 21, 2023 at 4:21 p.m.: There are two housing associations in Helsinki that were completed after 2011 and are not automatically exempt from the regulation. Also, not all houses older than that are exempted from regulation by the city’s announcement, as was claimed earlier in the story. If the average price per square meter of the old hitas housing company is lower than the average price per square meter of other houses in the area, the housing company must apply for an exemption from the regulation itself.