The people of Espoo Darina Shylina and Ossi Kukkonen have been looking for a detached house in the capital region and surrounding areas for a good year.
Nowadays they live in a small semi-detached triangle in Saunalahti. Remote working time and growing a family Kira– daughter 1.5 years ago made them plan to move.
A few weeks ago, the couple already made an offer for their favorite detached house in Tuusula.
The fact that the house is electrically heated affected the size of the couple’s offer. They justified their “bold” offer by saying that the heating system in the house would definitely need to be changed.
Although the seller agreed a little, Shylina and Kukkonen did not want to raise their offer at all.
“If you want low maintenance costs, then in addition to the age of the house, the type of heating plays an essential role”, reasons Kukkonen.
Tuusulan house according to Kukkonen, the electricity costs would have been more than 10,000 euros per year even with a frugal life. The estimated annual energy consumption was 34,000 kilowatt hours.
“Our semi-detached house has geothermal heating, and our current electricity contract is very affordable. So, currently our energy consumption, including the costs included in the company consideration, is 5,000 kilowatt hours per year. So we pay less than a thousand euros a year for electricity,” says Kukkonen.
The maintenance costs of the current home, which was completed a couple of years ago, are therefore a fraction compared to what they would have been in an electrically heated detached house in Tuusula.
“We are both economists. We measure how much capital we pay out of the house and how much we throw to the magpies, so to speak,” says Kukkonen.
Tuusulainen it would not have been possible to change the heating of the detached house to geothermal heat. Or switching to geothermal heat would have at least required a huge renovation, because the house is heated with electric cables, not with water-circulating radiators.
“Our family has expertise in heating matters. We calculated how living could be made more affordable with, for example, solar cells and additional air heat pumps, as well as cooling the garage and winter garden,” says Kukkonen.
Even those calculations did not calm the mind.
“Winter is quite dark. No one knows where this is going. Nor does anyone know how the economy and interest rates will develop. This type of house now has a buyer’s market,” says Kukkonen.
If a suitable detached house cannot be found, the Espoo couple’s second option is to build one themselves. In that case, they primarily want geothermal heat as the form of heating.
Darina Shylina is from Ukraine, but she moved to Finland before the war. Shylina and her husband Ossi Kokkonen started looking for a more spacious home after their daughter Kiira was born.
With geothermal energy There is now a strong demand for heated detached houses, says the CEO of Kiinteistömaailma Risto Kyhälä and the director of OP Home Lasse Fire hazard.
“Of course, people have been interested in geothermal energy even before the energy price went up, because they have been interested in ecology,” Palovaara says.
“Modern detached houses equipped with geothermal heat are under a rock. Good prices are paid for them and at least their prices are not falling,” says Kyhälä.
According to him, energy-hungry houses will be more difficult to sell as autumn progresses.
Real estate agents according to Kyhälä, they are now allowed to answer questions about replacing the heating system every day. For example, there is no geothermal heat in the groundwater area.
The business director of the apartment complex Marina Salenius buyers are interested not only in alternative heating solutions for electrically heated houses, but also in how much heating affects housing costs.
Salenius points out that the fact that the house is being bought for a long time, not just for this autumn or the coming winter, also influences the buyers’ consideration.
“Buyers are wondering how the start of electricity production from Olkiluoto 3 will be reflected in the price of electricity in the coming years.”
Power talking about the price is not limited to single-family houses or terraced houses in the housing market, says Palovaara of OP Kodi.
“In the same way, those planning to buy an apartment in an apartment building are interested in the heating type of the housing association.”
In any case, people’s awareness of energy prices is not reflected in the sales figures of apartments, says Palovaara.
“Now you can see the deals completed in July, and of course the preparations for those deals have already started earlier.”
Yet nor has it been seen that residents of single-family houses or terraced houses want to sell their homes because they are afraid of rising heating costs, says Kiinteistömaailma’s Kyhälä.
“Now we are just about to receive the first heavy electricity bills, so that thinking will surely increase.”
However, Salenius of the apartment center does not believe that people will largely start selling their houses because of the price of energy.
“Of course there can be individual cases.”
#Housing #trade #family #Espoo #home #dreams #heating #costs #started #horrendous
