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Record number of parents buying housing for their children

Christian Wenande
August 12th, 2015


This article is more than 9 years old.

The annual parental purchase rate have risen 56 percent since 2011

Low interest rates and a serious lack of student housing has led to a record number of Danish parents purchasing housing for their children, according to a new survey by the real estate company Home.

The survey, complied on behalf of Metroxpress newspaper, showed that during the first seven months of 2015, 7.4 percent more apartments were sold as parental purchases compared to the same period last year. Since 2011, there has been a 56 percent increase in the annual rate.

“We’ve never seen so many parental purchases as we are seeing at the moment,” Mads Ellegaard, a spokesperson from Home, told Metroxpress.

“August is normally the prime season for parental purchases, but they’ve been strong all year.”

READ MORE: Danish housing market still going full steam ahead

Years in advance
The development has been noted by Nykredit bank, which said that parental purchases amount to 25 percent of all apartment sales they are involved with.

“We’ve had cases of parents buying apartments despite their children being relatively little. They will then rent them out until the kids are old enough to move in,” said Kim Pauli, the head of communication at real estate agency Nybolig.

“They buy them years in advance to ensure their kids have student housing when they reach that age.”

In 2014, about 2,500 apartments were sold as parental purchases nationwide.


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

Pill pushers
At the Børnehuset daycare institution in Silkeborg a meeting was called where parents were implored not to bring their sick children to school.

At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

Parents sick and tired
Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”