Here at Tallinn Property we tend to focus on the real estate market in the capital. After all that is where our name derives from! Nevertheless, just to show we don’t completely overlook the rest of the country, we are delighted to report that Saaremaa proved to have the most active property market in Estonia in the admittedly recession-hit year of 2010.
Saaremaa, literally ‘Island’s land’, is by far the largest of Estonia’s offshore islands; at 2 673 square kilometres it covers an area almost as large as the entire Outer Hebrides archipelago off the West coast of Scotland, albeit with a somewhat different terrain, and is larger than any individual offshore UK island. It’s population is 39,000, of whom 15,000 live in the capital, Kuressaare. The island is particularly popular with tourists, both domestic and foreign, especially from Finland and Sweden.
According to Tõnu Toompark’s real estate blog, whereas an for the whole of Estonia an average of 31 properties per 1000 were the subject of the conclusion of a real estate deal in 2010 (up slightly from 29.5 in the previous year) where Saaremaa is concerned that figure was more than twice as high at 68 per 1000.
The second largest Estonian island, Hiiumaa, also saw an above average level of property transaction activity at 43 concluded transactions per 1000 properties.
As regards figures for real estate transaction value per capita, however, the situation is somewhat different. As might be expected, the district in which Tallinn is located, Harjumaa, being the priciest region for real estate, had the highest figure for turnover per capita (1 849 Euros, or 28 928 Kroons) as against 1 104 Euros (17 273 Kroons) average for the whole country. However the number of concluded deals per 1000 properties in Harjumaa was almost the same as the national average at 32 properties per 1000. Naturally other factors come into play here, and the value of real estate turnover does not necessarily directly correlate to how active the real estate market is.
Using the same criteria, whereas the district with the lowest rate of activity, at the other end of the country from Saaremaa, Tartu county (Tartumaa) revealed a figure of 26 concluded transactions per 1000 properties, the figure for transaction value per capita was almost the same as for the far more active Saaremaa district (988 and 972 Euros (15 643 and 15 204 Kroons) for Saaremaa and Tartumaa respectively).
More information (in Estonian) including graphs of both sets of figures, broken down for all regions of Estonia, can be found on Tõnu’s blog post.
Translation by Andrew Whyte
Tallinn Property by Goodson & Red
