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What can you do if your home in Denmark has been given a ‘skewed’ valuation?

Some 70,000 homeowners in Denmark have received valuations on their homes for tax purposes, which could include significant errors, according to media reports.

Published: 15 September 2023 15:05 CEST
What can you do if your home in Denmark has been given a 'skewed' valuation?
New property tax rules will apply in Denmark from next year. File photo: Ida Marie Odgaard/Ritzau Scanpix

Preliminary property valuations for forthcoming new tax rules, which take effect in 2024, were released earlier this week.

Homeowners have therefore been able to check the valuations of their homes, conducted by the Danish Property Assessment Agency (Vurderingsstyrelsen).

However, the published valuations – which consist of the property value (ejendomsværd) and land value (grundværdi) contain clear errors in up to 70,000 cases, according to reports by Danish media including broadcaster DR.

That is because some houses have been allocated a land value higher than the property value. This is impossible since the overall value of the property should be a combination of the values of the land and the building. A land value higher than the property value would therefore give the house a negative value.

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“We understand the confusion among homeowners over the examples of very skewed valuations that have been reported in the media. We have also been contacted by many frustrated members of the public,” Property Assessment Agency director Poul Taankvist said in a press statement.

The agency said it would review all valuations in the coming weeks before getting back to affected homeowners.

While incorrect preliminary valuations will not result in higher property tax bills – the new tax rules provide for deductions to be given to homeowners whose properties taxes would otherwise go up as a result of new valuations – they could potentially create complications when selling the house.

Although the Property Assessment Agency has said it will review cases, concerned homeowners have several steps of recourse available if they have valuations which they consider to be incorrect, DR writes.

These include contacting the Property Assessment Agency to request a reassessment of the valuation, especially if there is a 20 percent deviation from comparable properties; asking the agency to check it is based on correct data; sending an appeal to the Danish Data Protection Agency (Datatilsynet); and finally taking the Property Assessment Agency to court.

According to DR’s analysis of 1.6 million preliminary valuations, some 80,000 have land values higher than their property values. The average difference is some 1.3 million kroner.

The Property Assessment Agency has however previously stated that, in some cases, the land valuation might by higher than the value of the property, for example if two new properties could be built on the land in place of the existing one.

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Busiest August for housing in Denmark in three years as sales bounce back

The number of properties a month sold in Denmark continued to bounce back in August, according to new data, with a surge in summer house sales pushing the market to the busiest August in three years.

Published: 19 September 2024 10:42 CEST
Busiest August for housing in Denmark in three years as sales bounce back

A total of 7,248 residential properties were sold this August, according to the latest statistics from the Boligsiden housing website, 1.2 percent up on July and 1.4 percent up on August 2023, with sales being driven by the buoyant market for summer houses and owner-occupied apartments. 

“We are now back at a level similar to what we had a few years back, before interest rates started to rise,” Mira Lie Nielsen, an economist at Nykredit, told the Ritzau newswire. “There have been high wage increases, interest rates are on the way down, and then there is a low supply of apartments, which means that both the prices, but also the transactions, are climbing nicely again.”

Below you can see a diagram by Boligsiden showing the number of properties sold in August over each of the past six years, showing the peak during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

Source: Boligsiden

Birgit Daetz, housing economist and communications director at Boligsiden, said that the increase in sales between July in August, although smaller than usual, did not mean the market was slowing down. 

“This is mainly due to the fact that an extraordinary number of homes were sold in July this year, which is why the increase in August sales seems a little smaller. In other words, this is a good sales result for August this year, which is close to the average sales for the same month in the years before corona,” she said in a statement.

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The number of detached and semi-detached houses sold fell 1.8 percent from July to August, with falls in Southern Denmark and Zealand only partly compensated by a rise in the number of house sales in Central Jutland, Greater Copenhagen and North Jutland. 

“It is not unusual that the housing market is slightly more affected by the summer holiday break compared to the other housing types, because it is often families with children who buy a house, where the majority of them are on holiday at the same time as the school summer holidays, which continue into August,”  Daetz explained.

“However, despite the summer holidays, this year’s August sales of houses exceed the average sales for the month in the years before corona in the vast majority of the country, which shows that house sales are still at a good level.”

The number of summer houses sold soared by 13.6 percent between July and August, with owners presumably waiting until the end of their summer holidays before finalising sales. 

Sales of owner-occupied apartments were also strong, rising 5.8 percent between July and August, and as much as 9.5 percent in Copenhagen, something Daetz said continued an established trend. 

“For a relatively long time, we have seen growth in the market for owner-occupied flats, with increasing commercial activity and higher sales prices. It is a surprising development, which has occurred despite the fact that property taxes have in many cases increased for owner-occupied flats – especially in the capital,” Daetz said.

Even after this year’s rebound, however, the Danish housing market is still 20 percent slower than it was in the years running of to the Covid-19 pandemic and the following period of high inflation. 

“Even though the apartment market seems to be hot at the moment, sales are still lagging behind compared to the average August sales in the years before corona by 20 percent,” Daetz said. 

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