I Bought a New House in Denmark (2025 Townhouse)

I bought a new home. I’m the go-to expert for housing in Denmark for foreigners, so alas I thought you would like to hear about it. So I’ll tell you:

Why I Move
Why Now
What I Bought
High Level Process to Buy & Sell
My Expectations

This video will be useful for both first-time and second-time buyers.

Intro

For context, this is more of a personal video. Improv’d, no fancy special effects. Just bear with me.
SO – I’ve been living here for 7 years. I absolutely love this apartment, this huge garden down here, and the convenience of having everything close: Børnehave is 3 mins walk, office 12 mins bike, Tivoli 5 mins bike, and so on. Life is good.
BUT – Add two kids to the mix, and it starts to feel a bit cramped. This living room is my office, kids playroom, home workout area, kitchen, guests place and so on. It’s not that bad but alas, it’s tight.

In this context, the easy solution for us – and my wife’s favorite – has been to find a bigger apartment in this complex. If not, somewhere very close by.

So – Starting Actions – Preparing for the Purchase

I got us the bank pre-approval. You can get from banks a certificate that tells you for how much you can buy, and under what conditions. I think to have this is 100% important, and you can have this for six months or so then renew.

In our case, because we already own something, this bank approval depends also on how much this place is worth. It would be the same for you, as banks expect the bigger part of the downpayment to be the house.
THEN – Crucially – We asked for the approval to be NOT CONDITIONAL on the sale of our apartment. I want to be able to buy something and only sell this place once we’ve completed a purchase.
- This one is more tricky. For us, it was a no-negotiable. I don’t want to deal with the stress of having to buy something on a rush because we need to move out of our place by X date. But, obviously, this is a trade-off: for this option banks want you to come with a bigger downpayment. We expect to put down a lot.
1. I signed up to all the “Køberkartokek”. The Nybolig, Lokalbolig, Danbolig and so on – They’ll have a list of clients they call before they put properties for sale in the market. If you want something specific, you want to be the first to know.
- We learned this the hard way. That row over there, is exactly the same layout like our place, but then adds two more rooms and one more bathroom. It’s perfect. The penthouse was on sale last year, and it went on the market the time we were traveling for two weeks. Had we known about it earlier, maybe we would’ve made a move or get a serious offer ready.
- So, if you sign up to this lists, they’ll take you to see a place before it’s online, before they take the fancy pictures, and so on. Worth it, again, if you’re looking for something specific.

Market Timing

Still – We took this leisurely. But this is what I noticed about the market:

It’s a bad time to buy, compared to a few years ago – 4% interest, vs. 2%-1% for this place. Apartments have higher taxes.
That said, the market is very hot. I can see it at least in the areas I’ve been looking. The reason is that there are few properties on sale and – still – many interested buyers. That drives prices up.
For Context – I was told that this apartment has gone up by 15% or so in value over the past six months alone. It’s insanity.
I don’t think this is changing anytime soon. Prices kept going up despite the higher interest, despite the higher taxes … My Thinking is:
- So long as the economy keeps going well, people will have money. Many will be first-time buyers.
- When those first-time buyers buy a place from other people, these other people will have a big tax-free gain they can use as a downpayment for the next place, and so on.
So, alas, if you want to buy a place – if you need to buy a place – the best time was in 2021, but if not, the second best is now.
AND – Just to clarify, when we buy now we don’t buy on the expectation that the place we get will go up in value. I hope it does. But it’s never something you should consider as your main motivation. Even if it’s the best deal in Denmark, that’s speculation.

What Did We Buy

I told you, original plan was this building. We missed the penthouse, but in November I get a call for the place in the corner. Three big bedrooms, two bathrooms, nice big living room, nice view and totally renovated. Looks amazing.

Asking Price – 11m. Higher than the penthouse – ridiculous.
Bad experience, it took weeks for them to come up with data, answer my questions. I bid under 11m, told to bid 11m or else no deal. I bid 11m then they asked for 11,5m to close. I dropped my pants, offered the 11,5m.
- It was a bad deal but what my wife wanted, so alas we still went for it. I’m supposed to be a negotiation guy, but these guys just played with me.
- BUT – After the 11,5m offer, they came back again and told me they wanted 12m and move in in October. I then walked away.
For this emotional situations, it makes sense to write down your walk-away price and negotiation strategy ahead of the game. I wrote down that my walk-away was 11,5m even if I could’ve bought for more. I sticked to what I committed.

The reason I tell you about this is because it just sets the scene of how crazy the market can be. That place is now on the market and I don’t think they’ll even sell for 11,5m. But you need to remember that for some people in Denmark selling their home for a lot of money is the one big break they’ll have in their financial lives, so they can be very greedy.

While this nonsense was going on, I worked on building alternatives. That was Option A, especially for my wife, but I looked for Option B, C and D. In and outside Islands Brygge.

There’s a little Townhouse Village just 5-10 min walk from here, and I had went to see all of them over the past year – there are like 5 types and I went to see all.
I liked the idea of a Townhouse myself as it’s more space, more “house-y” while at the same time being much less maintenance and work, and you’ve many of the perks that people with apartments have as well.
Specifically, there’s a good bunch down there where the houses have half-floors. So Living Room-Kitchen-Rooms-Rooms, etc. with short stairs. You miss the nice, long spaces of normal townhouses, but because it’s like this the spaces feel much closer. I was worried that in a normal townhouse you otherwise feel too separated from the kids, or have a third floor living room you never go to. So that became my favorite option.

Those Townhouses sell very quickly though, and again it helped to be in this Buyers’ List. I got a call around the NY for one, I went to see it and was like – okay, this could work. I went traveling for two weeks after that (lol) but the agent was very good following up and so on.

My wife wasn’t that keen (didn’t even go to see it first) but here’s where I put some effort. I made a slide-deck to “sell her the dream”: the pros, cons, address concerns, pictures and mock ups.
This house was as-is not nice. It’s cluttered, uglily decorated, and so on. But as I’ve seen the similar houses on sale and went to visit them in the past, I could paint a picture of how it could be very very nice with little work.
AND it worked. I took her to see it and she got convinced.
We made a bid, negotiated and got a deal much better than the corner apartment. Good! AND, again, this house never came out into the market. It was a “hidden sale”, as they call it.
- Just one negotiation tip – I didn’t have to get my pants down as in the other place, but when I got a final counter-offer from the seller, I called their bluff and made an offer for 100K less, and got it. Just one email saving 100K. Always negotiate! (Even when it’s almost impossible.)

I had a million learnings on this. I’ll document them in future videos and will update my Dream Home Denmark course.

I’ll also start the process of putting this place up for sale as well. Will also document what I learned.

If you’ve any questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll make follow up videos to answer the majority of them. Thanks for watching and cheers!