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How the cost of renting an apartment in Copenhagen compares to other cities in Denmark

Copenhagen has a reputation for far higher rent costs than elsewhere in Denmark. How much more are you likely to pay to rent in the capital?

Published: 20 September 2021 18:10 CEST
How the cost of renting an apartment in Copenhagen compares to other cities in Denmark
Photo: Thomas Lekfeldt/Ritzau Scanpix

With the arguable exception of second city Aarhus, Copenhagen is significantly more expensive to rent housing than anywhere else in Denmark.

But the extra cost in the capital depends on where else in Denmark you compare with, as well as the type of housing you rent.

Private or general housing?

First, it is important to note the difference between the two main types of rental housing in Denmark: private rentals and almene boliger (literally, ‘general housing’), a form of subsidised housing.

For almene boliger, local municipalities put up 10 percent of building costs and in return have the right to decide who is allocated one in four available apartments, enabling them to provide housing to municipal residents who need it. The housing therefore plays a role in the social housing provision.

This type of housing is normally managed by a boligforening or housing association. Rent goes towards costs of running the housing and to pay off the housing association’s loans, which means property owners aren’t profiting from rents and prices are controlled.

Aside from housing assigned by the municipality, almene boliger are open for anyone. However, to get one, you must get to the top of a waiting list, which you join by signing up with associations which operate housing in the city where you live (or want to live).

In Copenhagen or Aarhus, it can take years to get to the top of these lists, while in smaller cities you might get an offer in weeks or even days.

As such, many newcomers to Denmark must turn to the private rental market if they are living in one of the main cities.

READ ALSO: Deposits, complaints and registration: Five key things to know about renting in Denmark

Private housing: Copenhagen clearly pricier 

A study conducted by housing research centre Bolius in November 2020 found the cost of a 56 square-metre apartment in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro district to be 8,536 kroner per month.

The study, which was based on data from 2019 and 2020 from rental platforms boliga.dk and boligportal.dk, shows the average monthly cost of non-limited private apartments on Nørrebro, compared with 16 other locations in Denmark.

The cost takes into account the cost of a deposit (normally three months’ rent) and adds it to the average cost of renting the housing for five years (thereby assuming none of the deposit is returned to the tenant).

In comparison to the price in Nørrebro, the study found rent in Hillerød north of Copenhagen to be slightly less (8,218 kroner) for a slightly larger apartment (65 square metres).

Moving further out from Copenhagen, costs begin to drop even more.

In Kalundborg on the west coast of Zealand, you can rent a 71-square-metre flat for 5,167 kroner per month. Næstved, a commuter town between Copenhagen and the Great Belt Bridge, comes in at 6,039 kroner for an apartment at 72 square metres.

The cheaper rents are consistent further to the west, exemplified in Jutland cities Aalborg (5,544 kroner for 62 square metres), Vejle (6.696 kroner for 84 square metres) and Esbjerg (4,399 kroner for 54 square metres).

Although Aarhus is not included in the study, third-largest city Odense is. Here, there is still a significant saving on Copenhagen, with 8,488 kroner, a similar rent to that in Nørrebro, getting you an apartment over 50 percent bigger at 82 square metres.

General (almene) housing: closer, but still higher in Greater Copenhagen

Rent prices for almene or subsidised housing were most recently analysed in a 2020 report by Landsbyggefonden (National Building Foundation), a support institution for the social housing sector.

According to that report, the rent for family housing (meaning housing not reserved for students or seniors) is “on average, approximately 100-200 kroner per square metre higher [per year, ed.] east of the Great Belt Bridge than west of it”.

Of the five administrative regions, average rent for family subsidised housing is highest in Greater Copenhagen at 906 kroner per square metre for a year’s rent.

The lowest rents can be found in South Denmark, where the yearly cost is 722 kroner per square metre.

Zealand is the region that comes closest to Copenhagen on the costs for this type of regular housing. Here, tenants can expect to pay 859 kroner per square metre in a year. The equivalent costs in Central Jutland and North Jutland and 778 kroner and 747 kroner respectively.

The study also places Greater Copenhagen as the most expensive region when rents are presented as the median monthly rent for family housing.

Here, the median values are split into five categories based on apartment size, with Copenhagen coming out as the most expensive region for each category.

For example, the median monthly rents for apartments between 50-60 square metres are as follows: 5,039 kroner (Greater Copenhagen); 4,913 kroner (Zealand); 4,541 kroner (Central Jutland); 4,388 kroner (North Jutland); 4,236 kroner (South Denmark). The national average is 4,667 kroner.

Sources: Domea, Bolius, Landsbyggefonden

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INTERVIEW: ‘Expats are targeted in Denmark by landlords who charge excess rent’

Alex Dagil, the serial entrepreneur behind the company Rent Hero has helped over a thousand foreigners in Denmark challenge excess rents. He explained to The Local why expats are targeted and why he won't take on every case.

Published: 21 May 2024 15:53 CEST
INTERVIEW: 'Expats are targeted in Denmark by landlords who charge excess rent'

Denmark’s system of rent control is complicated, with at least four different sets of rules determining what counts as a fair rent, depending on the age, location and size of the apartment, and on what actions current and former landlords have taken to win the right to levy higher rents. 

But rent is still controlled, meaning anyone who suspects they are being overcharged can submit a complaint to their local rental board (see list here), themselves.

You can also ask Lejernes Landsorganisation (LLO, the Danish Tenants Organisation) and Dankse Lejere (Danish Tenants), two tenants unions who help members win fair rent cases. Then there are the private companies offering help reducing rents, often on a no-win, no-free basis, such as Fair Husleje and Digura. Rent Hero is alone in specialising in helping foreigners. 

READ ALSO: The four ways your rent can be regulated in Denmark

“We saw that expats were being overcharged and that they were not really any companies that tried to specifically cater to the needs of expats,” Dagil told The Local about his decision to launch the company five years ago. 

This was surprising, he said, as foreigners were and still are disproportionately affected by unscrupulous landlords.  

“Landlords who want to rent out housing at above the fair price target expats because they don’t know the rules,” he explained. “And then even if they lose a case, they limit their loss because an expat might stay in an apartment for two to three years, but if you rented out to a Dane, they might be stuck there for ten years.”

This can make a big difference to the financial impact of having excess rents corrected, he pointed out. 

If it’s decided rent should be reduced by 5,000 kroner a month, which is quite common, the landlord faces an annual loss of 60,000 kroner. If the Danish tenant remains in place for 10 years, that’s a 600,000 kroner loss. If an expat manages to get their rent reduced, they might only stay three years, limiting the loss to 180,000 kroner. 

This is why some landlords advertise apartments as available to expats only, or use expats only rental portals like Apartment in Copenhagen. 

“Those apartments are never available for Danes for the specific reasons which I mentioned before: The rent is super-overpriced, so they’re worried that it could be rented out to a Dane they would stay there for longer and and the likelihood of them being aware of rent control is probably also higher.” 

Some foreigners are of course naive, but others are simply in a hurry to get an address that can provide them with a CPR number, which can into turn allow them to get a bank account, and so start work. 

“They have a job, which they would very much like to start and they need to have a place to register their CPR, so they can get started with their life in Denmark. So they’re much more desperate in a housing market where everybody wants affordable housing,” Dagil explained.

The landlords offering these expat-targeted apartments will often claim that they’re providing a service that makes it easier for expats to settle. 

“They say ‘we’re offering this great product for expats’. Well, that’s fine. You’re doing a product targeted at expats. But there’s no place in the rental law for creative products targeted towards the needs of expats, because rent control is rent control. And they don’t see it that way,” Dagil said.

Rent Hero estimates that expats are charged on average 30 percent more in rent than Danes are for a comparable apartment, but for some expats, that’s a price worth paying. Dagil told The Local he found many expats are unwilling to challenge excess rents, even if they fully understand how much extra they are paying. 

“The primary issue that expats have is that they’re worried that if they start a case they’ll get evicted. What happens with their deposit, if they start a case? Those are the two primary issues. It’s never isolated. People don’t look at rent in isolation. They’re worried about, what if the landlord retaliates? What if they do x? What if I need to have my dishwasher switched? What happens then? It’s not necessarily the lack of information, which is the biggest thing holding people back.” 

Dagil said Rent Hero’s interests are more aligned with those of tenants than the big rental unions, as the rental unions generally want to take all cases to the rental board to challenge the rent, partly to set a precedent keeping rent under control for all tenants, even if it might not be in the interests of the individual tenant. 

Big landlords in Denmark increasingly appeal all decisions against them from rental boards to the higher housing court, largely because a new rule requires them to inform all tenants in a building if they accept a rental board’s decision, meaning they risk other tenants also seeking reduced rent. 

Often, Dagil said, this can mean tenants risk spending more on legal costs than they can get back in rent. 

“There’s a lot of cases we simply do not take – even though the client might win it at the rent board,” he explained. “If the tenant doesn’t have legal insurance, they will have to pay for that cost themselves. If you’re dealing with a case that might save 1000 kroner a year in rent, and you’re left with a potential court case that costs you 50,000 to 70,000 kroner to pursue, no one in their right mind would pursue these cases.”

Dagil argues that the two tenant unions will tend to push members to pursue such cases, whereas Rent Hero is more likely to seek a settlement with the landlord, that might not reduce rent to such a large extent but which will avoid the courts. Rent Hero, he says, will only advise clients to go to the courts if the amount they are being overcharged is sufficiently large, if the landlord is a relatively small landlord who tends not to appeal cases, or if the tenant has legal insurance. 

An article in Vi Lejere, a website run by the Danish Tenants’ Organisation, accuses Rent Hero on the other hand of levying “huge fees”, with one tenant ending up having to pay the company fully half of the excess rent they had recouped.  

Dagil does admit that Rent Hero is “maybe a bit more expensive”, than the other rent reduction companies. “But it’s very easy to get hold of us usually, and we’re also super-specialised,” he said. 

The tenants’ organisations are likely to push people to take their case to the rent board regardless, even though they only have a win rate of about 50 percent, whereas Rent Hero, with its no-win, no-pay structure has to focus on cases with a high chance of a quick win.  

“If they don’t have the conversation beforehand about legal insurance, it’s probable you will end up worse than you were before. And I think that what I try to strive towards is to be as honest as possible.” 

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