There will be a starting price (utgångspris) issued with the property details but it is important to do a lot of homework before you start bidding to ensure you know what a reasonable price is. Because the size of property is important (particularly in cities), a good guide is the price per square metre that you’re offering – this will often be a point of discussion when you’ve bought somewhere - ‘how much did you pay per m2?’.  Agents should be able to advise you what the ‘going rate’ is for the sort of property you’re looking for. In general, property will sell for more than the starting price – at a very rough estimate, about 15% higher - but this will vary enormously dependent on where you live and the state of the housing market.

If you will be buying a property (normally an apartment) in a communal building, you also need to consider the monthly payment (avgift). Your initial capital payment is not the end of your outlay – you then pay a fee monthly which can be quite significant (sometimes as high as 8000kr or more).

For communal buildings, there is no one person who owns the entire building – every owner-occupant owns a portion of the whole. The monthly payments go towards the communal upkeep of the building plus helping to pay off any mortgage outstanding on the building as a whole. The funds are controlled by a management committee (styrelse) comprising residents from the building and they decide how best to manage the assets. It is therefore also worth getting a copy of the accounts to try and assess how well the money is managed or whether, by buying a property in the building, you are also buying into a huge debt – some of which will be yours. They are usually available and handed out with the prospectus when you receive when you view the property.

Often new buildings have higher monthly fees than older buildings because there is still more debt outstanding on them. In general, properties with a low monthly fee will be able to command a higher initial capital payment but this does not always follow so make sure you do your sums carefully. The bank should be able to help when you prepare your mortgage application by giving you a variety of scenarios on how much you can afford to spend on the capital based on several different monthly fees.