Are rents in Oslo still rising?

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Are rents in Oslo still rising today?

Yes. Oslo rents are still rising today, with Eiendom Norge recording a 3.6% increase in the second quarter and a 4.7% increase over the latest four quarters.

That 3.6% quarterly move was actually the strongest among Norway’s four largest rental markets. Trondheim and Stavanger/Sandnes were both up 2.3%, while Bergen fell 1.1% during the quarter. Eiendom Norge’s index draws on data from FINN, Utleiemegleren, Heimstaden, Krogsveen and USBL, so it gives us a broader view than one listing website alone.

The longer trend is even clearer. Across the four largest cities, rents have climbed about 32% since the sharp post-pandemic rise began in early 2022. Consumer prices increased a little over 20% during the same period. Renters are therefore paying much more in real terms than they were four years ago.

So the immediate answer is firm: Oslo’s rental market has not reached a general plateau. Prices are still moving higher.

Is Oslo rent growth actually speeding up again?

Over the latest quarter, yes. Oslo rents rose faster in Q2 than they had immediately beforehand.

Eiendom Norge measured a 2.1% rise in Oslo during the first quarter and 3.6% in the second. The latest move was therefore more than one percentage point stronger.

Some of that acceleration is seasonal. Spring and summer bring more rental turnover, especially as students and young workers prepare for moves. Yet the latest Q2 increase was unusually strong even after we put it beside previous second quarters. Eiendom Norge has tracked the market since 2013, and only the previous two years produced stronger Q2 rental growth across the four major cities.

So the annual pace has cooled, but Q2 itself was still a very strong quarter.

Is Oslo rent inflation slowing over the longer term?

Yes. Oslo rents are climbing, but the annual pace has cooled from the fastest part of the recent boom.

Eiendom Norge currently puts Oslo’s four-quarter increase at 4.7%. Earlier annual readings had been higher, and separate figures for 2025 showed Oslo rental growth of around 6%. Across the four largest cities, annual growth also fell from 7.9% after Q1 to 4.8% after Q2.

We should therefore separate the price level from the growth rate. Oslo rents can keep reaching new highs even as the percentage increase becomes less extreme.

That is roughly what we are seeing now. A renter waiting for prices to fall has not been rewarded, but landlords can no longer assume the same pace of increase that characterised the strongest post-2022 period.

Why do Oslo rent statistics show such different prices?

Because Oslo rent statistics are often measuring completely different tenants. Existing leases, newly signed contracts and advertised apartments can easily produce very different averages.

Statistics Norway’s latest Rental Market Survey puts the average two-room home in Oslo and Bærum at NOK 15,260 a month. Hybel and Menon Economics, looking at active contracts in Q2, put an Oslo two-room apartment at NOK 15,989. Current advertised apartments can easily appear above NOK 20,000, particularly in central areas or for newer homes.

Those numbers should not be blended into one supposed “Oslo rent.” Someone who signed a lease several years ago can pay much less than someone searching for an equivalent apartment today.

Statistics Norway also warns against using its annual survey as a simple year-to-year rent index because the underlying sample changes. For current price direction, contract and transaction-based indices tell us more.

Are new tenants in Oslo getting hit harder than existing tenants?

Usually, yes. Someone looking for an Oslo apartment now is much more exposed to current market prices than a tenant sitting on an older lease.

Existing tenants can carry rents negotiated when the market was cheaper, and Norwegian rent rules also restrict how quickly landlords can reset some contracts. A newly vacant apartment can instead be offered much closer to today’s market level.

The gap becomes obvious when we compare broad survey data with fresh listings and newer contracts. Statistics Norway puts a typical two-room Oslo and Bærum rent at NOK 15,260, while Hybel’s active-contract figure is already close to NOK 16,000. Newly marketed modern apartments in Oslo regularly move into the NOK 20,000 range.

That makes the current rental squeeze especially painful for people changing homes. Two tenants living in similar apartments can face very different costs simply because one signed recently and the other did not.

How much does it cost to rent a small apartment in Oslo now?

A typical Oslo renter currently needs roughly NOK 12,000 for a one-room apartment, NOK 16,000 for a two-room and NOK 20,000 for a three-room home in Hybel’s active-contract data.

Hybel and Menon Economics measured an average NOK 8,208 for a room in shared accommodation, NOK 11,834 for a one-room apartment, NOK 15,989 for a two-room apartment and NOK 19,954 for a three-room apartment in Q2.

Interestingly, those apartment-type averages barely moved from Q1. Two-room rents increased from NOK 15,797 to NOK 15,989, while three-room rents went from NOK 19,861 to NOK 19,954.

That looks much calmer than Eiendom Norge’s 3.6% citywide quarterly increase. The difference tells us that changes in which homes are rented, where they are located and when contracts are signed can move a broad index even when the average rent within one apartment category barely changes.

Are small Oslo apartments still the most expensive for what you get?

Absolutely. Small Oslo homes remain brutally expensive per square metre.

Statistics Norway’s latest survey puts one-room homes in Oslo and Bærum at NOK 5,270 per square metre per year. Two-room homes average NOK 4,060, three-room homes NOK 3,640 and properties with five rooms or more NOK 2,740.

A one-room tenant is therefore paying almost twice as much per square metre as someone renting a much larger home.

That helps explain why students, younger workers and single renters feel the market most intensely. They may choose the cheapest apartment category in absolute kroner, yet every square metre costs them far more.

Hybel and Menon’s affordability calculations reinforce the point. Under their student-budget assumptions, someone receiving the full basic student loan would still need around NOK 77,000 in additional gross yearly income to afford a shared room in Oslo, NOK 129,000 for a one-room apartment and NOK 189,000 for a two-room.

Are central Oslo rents much higher than rents farther out?

Yes. Location still changes an Oslo rent dramatically, particularly for smaller apartments.

Statistics Norway estimates that a standardised 50-square-metre two-room home in areas including Frogner, Ullern, Sentrum and St. Hanshaugen costs around NOK 16,700 a month in its latest geographic comparison.

Current market listings can go much higher once we add newer buildings, furnishing, short walking distances to the centre or utilities. Outer neighbourhoods generally give renters more space for the same monthly budget.

This geographical gap also explains why citywide averages can be misleading. A NOK 16,000 two-room average tells us surprisingly little about what someone will actually pay for a renovated apartment around Frogner, Grünerløkka or St. Hanshaugen.

Is Oslo still Norway’s most expensive city for renters?

Yes. Oslo is currently the most expensive large rental market in Norway by a comfortable margin, even though Bergen has recently been raising rents faster.

Hybel and Menon’s Q2 figures put Oslo’s average across rental categories at NOK 13,996 per month. Stavanger/Sandnes was at NOK 12,115, Bergen at NOK 11,422 and Trondheim at NOK 10,666.

That makes Oslo about 23% more expensive than Bergen and 31% more expensive than Trondheim on this measure.

The interesting part is the growth ranking. Oslo rents were up 5% year on year in the same dataset, compared with 12% in Bergen and 8.5% in Stavanger/Sandnes. Oslo is therefore no longer the fastest-moving rental city. Its bigger problem is that rents are rising from an already exceptional level.

Why are Oslo rents rising while Oslo home prices have struggled?

Because thousands of Oslo landlords have been selling their rental properties to people who want to live in them.

That creates a strange split between the two markets. More former rentals appearing for sale give homebuyers additional choice and can hold back sale prices. Once an owner-occupier buys one of those apartments, however, the property usually disappears from the rental market.

Recent research from Norges Eiendomsmeglerforbund, Ambita and Samfunnsøkonomisk Analyse estimates that around one in five Oslo investor homes has disappeared since 2019. Their calculations suggest that roughly 16,000 homes have potentially been released into the owner-occupied market through sales by private and professional investors.

For scale, only around 20,000 new homes were completed in Oslo over the same broad period. Investor selling has therefore added an amount of owner-occupied supply comparable to a very large share of the city’s new construction.

The contradiction is only apparent. The same landlord sell-off can make buying slightly easier while making renting harder.

How big is the landlord sell-off in Oslo?

The Oslo landlord sell-off is now big enough to have changed the structure of the rental market.

Norges Eiendomsmeglerforbund’s latest analysis finds that more than 11,500 privately owned secondary homes have disappeared since 2019. Company-owned housing has fallen by almost another 4,900 units over a shorter period.

The report describes roughly one in five investor-owned Oslo homes as gone. Finanstilsynet had already picked up the same direction in official data, reporting 3,500 fewer secondary homes between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025 alone, a 6.8% drop.

So we are dealing with several years of withdrawals involving thousands of apartments rather than a temporary dip in landlord activity.

As seen above, some of these properties remain part of Oslo’s total housing stock after being bought by owner-occupiers. The important change for renters is that they are no longer available to rent.

Why are so many Oslo landlords getting out?

For many Oslo landlords, the numbers simply became much less attractive once borrowing costs, taxes and operating expenses rose.

The latest Norges Bank decision left the policy rate at 4.25%. That is still a restrictive financing environment for an investor borrowing several million kroner against an apartment.

The change from the cheap-money period is huge. A landlord carrying NOK 4 million of debt pays NOK 40,000 more per year in interest for every one percentage point added to the effective borrowing rate, before considering tax treatment, common charges, maintenance or periods without a tenant.

Rents have risen enough to offset part of that pressure, but apparently not enough for thousands of owners. Eiendom Norge and the latest NEF investor report both connect the rental sell-off with high interest rates, heavier taxes and rising operating costs.

For tenants, the feedback loop is ugly: rents rise, ownership is still expensive, more landlords sell, and each sale to an owner-occupier removes another rental home.

Does Oslo actually have a shortage of rental listings right now?

Oslo currently has more rental listings than we might expect from the landlord sell-off, which is one of the most interesting recent developments in the market.

Eiendom Norge counted 2,022 Oslo homes for rent on FINN at the end of Q2. Across Norway’s four biggest cities there were 3,897 listings, a level surpassed in its historical comparison only during the pandemic period in late 2020.

That complicates the story. There are clearly plenty of homes being advertised at the moment.

Eiendom Norge itself said it was too early to know whether this represented a lasting improvement in supply or a temporary move ahead of the summer rental season. We also need to distinguish available listings from the total stock of long-term rental homes. The latest NEF figures still show a huge multi-year decline in investor ownership.

New construction is not providing a convincing rescue either. Oslo issued 647 occupancy permits in Q2, up sharply from just 222 a year earlier, helped by apartment projects and student housing. Yet the municipality stressed that the previous year was unusually weak. Permits to start new homes actually fell from 774 to 617.

For now, Oslo has an unusual combination: plenty of visible listings, weak new construction and a shrinking underlying investor-owned housing stock. If the high FINN inventory persists for several quarters, our view of supply pressure should change. One strong seasonal reading is not enough yet.

Are Oslo rents becoming unaffordable?

For a growing share of younger and lower-income renters, Oslo rents are already extremely difficult to absorb.

Statistics Norway puts the average two-room rent in Oslo and Bærum at NOK 15,260 per month, around 29% above the nationwide equivalent. A three-room home averages NOK 19,030, compared with NOK 13,910 nationally.

Even another fairly ordinary 5% increase adds around NOK 760 a month to a NOK 15,260 rent. Over a year, that is more than NOK 9,000 of extra housing expenditure. For a three-room home at NOK 19,030, the same percentage increase adds more than NOK 11,000 a year.

The problem today is increasingly the starting price. Oslo no longer needs double-digit rent inflation to produce a painful increase in household costs.

Hybel and Menon’s student calculations make that especially obvious. Even shared accommodation leaves a large funding gap for someone relying mainly on student support, while renting a private one-room apartment requires substantial extra income.

Could weaker demand or lower interest rates finally stop Oslo rents rising?

Yes, either could cool Oslo rents, but neither has done enough yet to turn the market downward.

On the demand side, Norway’s economy is no longer running particularly hot. Norges Bank says capacity utilisation is drifting lower, while unemployment has changed little recently. A meaningful deterioration in employment would eventually make it harder for landlords to keep raising rents.

Interest rates could also change the landlord calculation. Cheaper financing would make rental ownership more attractive again and might slow the investor sell-off.

But that relief has not arrived. The policy rate is currently 4.25%, and Norges Bank has even said another increase could still become necessary if inflation proves stubborn. Rebuilding Oslo’s rental stock would also take time after thousands of investor homes have already been sold.

The recent jump in FINN listings gives us the first reason to watch supply more closely. If high availability persists while demand weakens, landlords may find it much harder to push rents higher. We are not there yet.

So, are Oslo rents still rising?

Yes. Oslo rents are still rising today, although the market has moved from an extraordinary rental surge toward slower and much less uniform growth.

The cleanest current measure gives us a 4.7% increase over four quarters and a surprisingly strong 3.6% rise in Q2. Hybel and Menon’s separate contract data also show Oslo rents around 5% higher than a year earlier. Two independent approaches are therefore pointing upward.

At the same time, the details are becoming more mixed. Annual growth has slowed from earlier peaks. Average rents for specific apartment sizes barely changed between Q1 and Q2 in Hybel’s data. Most interestingly, FINN had 2,022 Oslo rental listings at the end of Q2, an unusually high number.

We would still bet on upward pressure for now. Around one in five investor homes has disappeared since 2019, new housing starts remain weak, borrowing costs are high and Oslo is already Norway’s most expensive large rental market.

But the next phase should look different from the last one. The strongest evidence today supports continued rent increases at a more uneven pace, with enough fresh supply appearing on the market that another uninterrupted surge can no longer be taken for granted.

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