Wednesday 5 December 2007

"lies, damned lies and statistics"


"An average person in Finland lives in a block of flats in an owner-occupied home of 78.4 m2 consisting of 3 to 4 rooms, and pays a monthly maintenance charge of EUR 2.5 per square metre for it.", reported statistics Finland

"Housing loan in Finland totals EUR 22,400, and consumer and other credits EUR 9,400 per household. Housing costs account for a quarter of households' total consumption expenditure."

According to the same agency, the average price of a dwelling is about 1,990 euro/m2 (for the whole country). So for a 78.4 m2 it brings us to an average price of 156,000 euro. I don't understand how they get this 22,400 euro housing loan?

I know that OP bank (Osuuspankki) have released lately some figures that seems to come from another planet with respect to loans burden but coming from a state agency it's a disappointment in term of disinformation. I think they should publish this data based on region not throwing an average "non sense".


As Mark Twain once pointed out: " There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics"

Source: housing price , loan cost

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The 22 400 euro/household figure indicates that most of the houses are paid off, or have a high proportion of the loan paid off.

If the figures are correct then the level of debt in Finland is not as high as I had thought (although I suppose it excludes student loans)

"IslandCrow"

HousingFinland said...

"Most of the houses are paid off", -> this is implying that there has never been a housing boom...

It's true that in any remote location in Finland, there are lots of household that have bought they house in the 70's 80's and have paid back their loan.

So [0 + ... + 0 + 0] + 200.000 = 20.000 per household.

...I consider this statement from Statistics Finland as a politician type speech just distorting the reality.

One has to manipulate "averages" with care ...

Still housing cost over 200.000 or 300.000 Eur for new dwellings in the Helsinki region, which implies 5 to 10 times the debt they put forward...