Forkjøpsrett, how I loathe thee

There exists in Norwegian real estate legislation a law that allows members of exclusive, private organisations to steal winning bids on homes. This seems very strange to me in what is essentially an egalitarian, socialist society.

A while back Chris and I decided that our current apartment, though very nice and in a great location, is just feeling a bit too small these days, especially since the arrival of Mojo and Sushi. I also had concerns that in such a small space the cats wouldn’t get enough exercise or stimulation. So we decided to casually keep our eye on the real estate market, but we were only going to actually go to viewings of places that were really special.

We went to one somewhere between where we live now and the centre of town, but it was really too small for the price being asked, and despite the fact that it was very funky and had a great view over the river, it just wasn’t practical.

The only other place we looked at, some six weeks later, we immediately fell in love with.  We even decided not to bother waiting for the second place we’d found which wasn’t open for viewing for several more days. We bid, we won and we were ecstatic.

It was perfect for us. Two bedrooms meant finally having somewhere for guests to sleep, two fireplaces, two bathrooms, and best of all, two storeys joined by a charming spiral staircase. Deep window ledges perfect for cats to sun themselves in, a beautiful kitchen with induction stove and huge island bench… this place had everything we wanted. And it was ours!

For three happy, exciting weeks after we made the winning bid, we made so many plans about how we were going to buy all new furniture, and where we were going to put it. We planned out how we would move in right after our relaxing two week vacation in a Turkish beach resort… and then just less than a week before we were due to meet the owners and sign the papers, we got the call that all Norwegian home buyers dread;

I’m so sorry, but someone in the building has invoked forkjøpsrett and will be taking over your bid and buying the apartment.

Let me explain a little of my understanding of the forkjøpsrett rule. In some cases, the organisations whose members have a right to take over other people’s bids are very large, with thousands of members, and these members have precedent over one another according to how long they’ve had membership in the organisation. In our case, the organisation was made up of the 90 owners of apartments in the borettslag (cooperative).

Yes, we knew there were 20 days that we had to wait after we made our successful bid until we could officially call the apartment ours. And yes, although the agent assured us  that it was extremely unlikely to happen, especially in the current economic climate, we shouldn’t have let ourselves get excited until we had signed on the dotted line. But nevertheless it was a crushing blow, and honestly, even if it hadn’t happened I would still think this was a stinky law.

The original bidder has no right of reply, cannot offer more money to secure the apartment and cannot do anything except bend over.

In the larger organisations, the best-known in Oslo being OBOS  (Oslo Bolig- og Sparelag), there have even been stories of children being given membership as a christening gift so that by the time they want to buy a home they will have years of membership behind them to give them higher precedence. So for a non-member to buy an OBOS home can be almost impossible, especially back when the housing market was booming. Some people join just for one month in order to at least give them the edge over non-members.

In our case, however, the only way to be a member was to already own an apartment in the building. So whoever took our bid is either an investor or someone wanting to upgrade to a better apartment at the very nice price we secured for them. Either way, I think it stinks.

People have argued with me about this when I have said I think the property should only be advertised publicly after the members have decided they’re not interested. The argument is that the market would then be too small and would not benefit the seller by creating good competition. Okay, fair enough, but how does it benefit the owner if the original winning bidder can’t come back with a counter-offer? Surely this would mean even better competition and a better result for the owner.

And on a more personal note, who is this asshole who waited until there were only a few days left of the waiting period before swooping in and stealing our apartment? I know where you (are going to) live, jerk face!

So for us, it’s back to the drawing board and our tiny apartment for the foreseeable future. The market will most likely be slow in the coming weeks as Oslo pretty much shuts down for summer vacation.

To cheer ourselves up we booked a weekend trip to London at the end of July to catch up with friends and do some retail therapy. We also still have our Turkey trip to look forward to, and we’ll just have to try hard not to think about the fact that we were supposed to be moving into our new apartment the day we got home. *mutter*