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Rents of dwellings: documentation of statistics

2.1.2023 valid documentation

Basic data of the statistics

Data description

The quarterly statistics on rents describe the level of rents for dwellings and quarterly changes in rents. The statistics contain data on rents classified by area, type of financing and number of rooms from the reference period and retrospectively starting from 2015. The purpose of the statistics on rents is to provide information about the development of the rental market to all those monitoring the rental market.
 

Statistical population

The framework for the rental dwelling stock used in the calculation of the statistics on rents is formed from the Digital and Population Data Services Agency’s Building and Dwelling Register. All dwellings in blocks of flats and terraced houses in permanent use that are not institutional dwellings (halls of residence, services flats and old people's homes) and that tenants occupy on the basis of a rental agreement are selected from the register.

The rent level of dwellings rented by private persons is described with the help of administrative register data. Then rents of dwellings are deduced from rents paid by persons having received housing allowance. The dwelling in which the person receiving housing allowance lives is combined with the building and dwelling data of the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. The Digital and Population Data Services Agency's data on buildings and dwellings are used to conclude so-called non-subsidised rental dwellings that are divided into dwellings owned by companies and private persons. The Tax Administration's register of owner-occupied dwellings and data on dwellings freed from restrictions related to government-subsidised rental dwellings are used in the deduction. In practice, company-owned dwellings have been first defined from non-subsidised rental dwellings and the rest of the rental dwellings are defined as rental dwellings owned by private persons. Rental dwellings owned by private persons are dwellings where the owner does not live, but according to the Tax Administration the owner has rental income. In addition, private rental dwellings include dwellings whose owner is not an enterprise and which the tenant has reported as a rental dwelling with a change of address notification.

Statistical unit

The observation unit for rents of dwellings is a rental dwelling. The identification data of observations are a permanent building identifier in register data by means of which the basic data are combined with other administrative data.

Unit of measure

The data of the quarterly statistics on rents of dwellings are published as index point figures. Change percentages are also calculated based on the indices. In addition, data on average rents are published calculated both for the whole data and for new tenancies. In the data on average rents the measurement unit is EUR/m².

Base period

The base year of the rent index is 2015 (2015=100).

Reference period

The reference period of the quarterly statistics on rents of dwellings is a quarter. The statistics are released five weeks after the end of the statistical reference year. In addition, the statistics produce monthly rent data for the use of the Consumer Price Index.

Reference area

The basic classification levels of rents of dwellings are the whole country and rest of Finland.
Regional classifications of different levels are used in the statistics. The most detailed classification level is the sub-area classification of urban areas, which is based on the post code classification according to the price level and location of old dwellings in housing companies. In addition to municipalities, regions and major regions, different combination areas, such as Greater Helsinki and satellite municipalities, are used in the statistics. The Greater Helsinki area includes Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen. The satellite municipalities are Hyvinkää, Järvenpää, Kerava, Kirkkonummi, Nurmijärvi, Riihimäki, Sipoo, Tuusula and Vihti. A detailed regional classification can be found on the homepage of the statistics under Classifications.
 

Sector coverage

The index of rents of dwellings covers non-subsidised rental dwellings and government-subsidised rental dwellings rented in Finland. The observations included in the statistics represent rental dwellings in terraced houses and blocks of flats.

Time coverage

Quarterly data for the statistics on rents have been produced as a supplementary data collection of the Labour Force Survey since 2004. The data from the monthly data collection have also been used for the production of the Consumer Price Index. In addition, annual statistics on rents have been produced where the data collected for the Labour Force Survey have been supplemented with data from the Social Insurance Institution's housing allowance register.

The quarterly statistics on rents were last reviewed in 2010. Then the observation data started to monitor the development of the rent of the same dwelling over time. The data processing and calculation of the annual statistics were revised in 2011.

The publication of the statistics preceding the present quarterly statistics ended with the last quarter of 2018. As regards the annual statistics, the last release comprised the annual data for 2018.

For comparability reasons, the average rents and index for 2015 to 2018 were calculated retrospectively with the revised method.

Frequency of dissemination

The data of the statistics are published quarterly on Statistics Finland's website.

Concepts

Dwelling

A dwelling refers to a room or a suite of rooms which is intended for year-round habitation; is furnished with a kitchen, kitchenette or cooking area; and has a floor area of at least 7 square metres. Every dwelling must have its own entrance. A single-family house may be entered through an enclosed porch or veranda. If a dwelling is entered through the premises of another dwelling, it is not regarded as a separate dwelling but instead those two constitute one dwelling.

Floor area

The floor area of a dwelling is measured from the inner surfaces of its walls. The figure includes the floor areas of the utility room, walk-in cupboard, bathroom, hobby room, sauna, washroom and dressing room, as well as the floor areas of rooms used for working unless used by hired employees.

The following are not counted in the dwelling's floor area: garage, cellar, sauna facilities in an unfurnished basement, unheated storage space, balcony, porch, veranda and attic space unless used as a living space.

The floor area of a freetime residence refers to its gross floor area.

Government-subsidised dwelling

A government-subsidised dwelling is a dwelling produced with government ARAVA loans, in which the rent is determined by the cost correlation principle. Most of government-subsidised dwellings are owned by municipalities.

Hitas dwelling

Hitas is a regulation system for the price and quality level of dwellings built on rented plots owned by the City of Helsinki. Hitas dwellings refer to the dwellings subject to the regulation system in question.

Market price

The general actual selling price, or the price where supply and demand meet.

Monthly change

Monthly change is the relative change in the index from a time period one month earlier. The change is usually expressed as a percentage.

New tenancy

In the rent statistics a new tenancy is one started at most six months before the statistical reference period.

Nominal price index

Describes the change in prices relative to the base time period of the index (cf. real price index).

Non-subsidised dwelling

Non-subsidised dwellings are dwellings produced in other ways than with government ARAVA loans.

Number of rooms

The number of rooms is the number of rooms in a dwelling. Kitchen is not counted as a room. Dwellings with at least three rooms belong to the category 3h+.

Quarterly change

Quarterly change refers to the relative change in the index of the quarter compared with the index of the previous quarter. The change is usually expressed in percentages.

Real price index

Indicates the change in real prices compared with the index base time period (e.g. 2000, 1983 or 1970). The real price index is derived by dividing the point figure of the nominal price index with the point figure of the Consumer Price Index of the corresponding time period and base year.

Rent

Rents in the statistics also include water and heating charges paid separately. Rents do not include usage charges of dwellings, such as sauna, laundry or other such charges or electricity and telephone charges. The released mean rents are calculated per residential square metre of the dwelling per month (€/m2/kk). The average rents describe the differences in rent levels between regions and dwellings of different sizes and are not suitable for calculating changes in rents.

Rental dwelling

A rental dwelling refers to a dwelling which the tenant occupies on the basis of a rental agreement, where the tenant pays rent for the right to use the dwelling and for the facilities related to it. The data released in the rent statistics concern tenancies where the whole dwelling is occupied by the tenant. The rent statistics do not include rental dwellings where rents are for some reason, e.g. family connection, clearly lower than the market level. The rent statistics do not either contain halls of residence, serviced flats and old people's homes.

Type of financing

A classification describing the financing source of a dwelling or real estate.

A government-subsidised dwelling is a dwelling produced with government ARAVA loans, in which the rent is determined by the cost correlation principle. Most of government-subsidised dwellings are owned by municipalities.

Non-subsidised dwellings are other than government-subsidised dwellings.

Weight structure

Describes what meaning each sub-index (commodity, employee group, etc.) belonging to the index has for total index.

Classifications

Regional classification for rents of dwellings

Accuracy, reliability and timeliness

Overall accuracy

Cases with missing information about rent or floor area, or with exceptionally high or low rent due to contract within family or error in data entry are not accepted into the statistics.

The data are corrected so that clearly erroneous cases are first removed from the data. After this, observations are removed from the data if they are below the lowest five per cent or above the top two per cent based on the distribution of rent per square metre.

Timeliness and punctuality

Quarterly statistics on rents are published quarterly mainly three weeks after the end of the reference period of the statistics. The data in the publication are final data.

Timeliness

Quarterly statistics on rents are published quarterly five weeks after the end of the statistical reference period and the data in the publication are final data.

Punctuality

There is no delay in releasing data on the statistics on rents of dwellings. The data are published on the days indicated in the release calendar.

Comparability

Comparability - geographical

In terms of non-subsidised rental dwellings, the observation data of the statistics are focused on the biggest population centres. For smaller locations, the numbers of observations may be insufficient to calculate the indices.

Comparability - over time

Quarterly data for the statistics on rents have been produced as a supplementary data collection of the Labour Force Survey since 2004. The data from the monthly data collection have also been used for the production of the Consumer Price Index. In addition, annual statistics on rents have been produced where the data collected for the Labour Force Survey have been supplemented with data from the Social Insurance Institution's housing allowance register.

The quarterly statistics on rents were last reviewed in 2010. Then the observation data started to monitor the development of the rent of the same dwelling over time. The data processing and calculation of the annual statistics were revised in 2011.
The publication of the statistics preceding the present quarterly statistics ended with the last quarter of 2018. As regards the annual statistics, the last release comprised the annual data for 2018.

For comparability reasons, the average rents and index for 2015 to 2018 were calculated retrospectively with the revised method.

Students started receiving general housing allowance in August 2017. The change is visible in the housing allowance data in that students as a separate category was removed and all housing allowance customers are now classified either as recipients of general housing allowance or of housing allowance for pensioners. In the previous housing allowance data, the data on students differed from the data of recipients of general housing allowance. The above-mentioned impact of data harmonisation has been eliminated with statistical methods. In the time series of rents, the data change may locally appear as deviating behaviour of the index in the period concerned.
 

Coherence - cross domain

When these statistics are compared with data from other producers, the source of the basic data should be considered. The data of the quarterly statistics on rents are based on the Social Insurance Institution's register of housing allowances and on the data on rental housing companies included in the data collection. Therefore the statistics include quite a comprehensive sample of the rental dwelling stock in the whole country.

Eurostat publishes rent data on Finland based on the data of the Consumer Price Index. 
The method of the rent index is updated in connection with index revisions and methodological revisions may cause breaks in the time series. In place of the rent index, it is more recommended to use the cost-of-living index for tenancy agreements. The benefit of using the cost-of-living index in agreements is that the data series continues unbroken also when breaks occur in the series of the rent index or the Consumer Price Index in connection with index revisions.

Coherence - internal

The data for the statistics on rents of dwellings are internally uniform.

Source data and data collections

Source data

The data of the quarterly statistics on rents are based on the Social Insurance Institution's register of housing allowances and on the data on rental dwellings of rental housing companies. In addition, Statistics Finland’s data on the dwelling stock, derived from the Digital and Population Data Services Agency’s Register of Buildings and Dwellings, is also utilised in the compilation of the quarterly statistics. The observations included in the statistics represent rental dwellings in terraced houses and blocks of flats.

Data collection

The Social Insurance Institution and the largest rental housing companies supply the data of the housing allowance register as a monthly data transfer via an interface.

Frequency of data collection

The data for the statistics on rents of dwellings are collected monthly.

Methods

Data compilation

The average rents of rental dwellings per square metre describe the current rent level in dwellings of different size and type. The calculation is based on exhaustive register and dwelling stock data concerning both recipients of housing allowance and rental housing company dwellings. The data are weighted together based on the Register of Buildings and Dwellings and the Tax Administration's number data. The weighting is made by post-stratifying the data with respect to the type of rental dwelling (rental housing companies, private and government-subsidised rental dwellings), number of rooms (1, 2 and 3+ rooms) and the regional classification of the statistics. The average is estimated for each publication level so that the weighted total sum of rents is divided by the weighted total sum of floor areas.
 
The rent index is calculated with the Törnqvist index formula. The data are stratified based on the financing mode, area and number of rooms and the lowest level indices are calculated based on this stratification. Higher level indices are calculated by weighting the micro indices together with weights according to the rental dwelling stock. The base period is the previous year and the actual index series is calculated by chaining the indices into a long time series where the base year is 2015=100.

Data validation

In terms of rent sums, the data of the register of housing allowances are checked with euro-denominated and distribution-based limit processing. The numbers and percentages of observations removed in the processing are monitored through system reporting.

Principles and outlines

Contact organisation

Statistics Finland

Contact organisation unit

Social Statistics

Legal acts and other agreements

The compilation of statistics is guided by the Statistics Act. The Statistics Act contains provisions on collection of data, processing of data and the obligation to provide data. Besides the Statistics Act, the Data Protection Act and the Act on the Openness of Government Activities are applied to processing of data when producing statistics. 

Statistics Finland compiles statistics in line with the EU’s regulations applicable to statistics, which steer the statistical agencies of all EU Member States.  

Further information: Statistical legislation 

Confidentiality - policy

The data protection of data collected for statistical purposes is guaranteed in accordance with the requirements of the Statistics Act (280/2004), the Act on the Openness of Government Activities (621/1999), the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and the Data Protection Act (1050/2018). The data materials are protected at all stages of processing with the necessary physical and technical solutions. Statistics Finland has compiled detailed directions and instructions for confidential processing of the data. Employees have access only to the data essential for their duties. The premises where unit-level data are processed are not accessible to outsiders. Members of the personnel have signed a pledge of secrecy upon entering the service. Violation of data protection is punishable. 

Further information: Data protection | Statistics Finland (stat.fi) 

Confidentiality - data treatment

To ensure the reliability of the statistics, data are not published in categories with under 20 observations.

Release policy

Statistics Finland publishes new statistical data at 8 am on weekdays in its web service. The release times of statistics are given in advance in the release calendar available in the web service. The data are public after they have been updated in the web service. 

Further information: Publication principles for statistics at Statistics Finland 

Data sharing

The data of the statistics are supplied monthly to the use of the Consumer Price Index. Through the Consumer Price Index, rent data are also delivered monthly to Eurostat.

Accessibility and clarity

Statistical data are published as database tables in the StatFin database. The database is the primary publishing site of data, and new data are updated first there. When releasing statistical data, existing database tables can be updated with new data or completely new database tables can be published.   

In addition to statistical data published in the StatFin database, a release on the key data is usually published in the web service. If the release contains data concerning several reference periods (e.g. monthly and annual data), a review bringing together these data is published in the web service. Database tables updated at the time of publication are listed both in the release and in the review. In some cases, statistical data can also be published as mere database releases in the StatFin database. No release or review is published in connection with these database releases. 

Releases and database tables are published in three languages, in Finnish, Swedish and English. The language versions of releases may have more limited content than in Finnish.   

Information about changes in the publication schedules of releases and database tables and about corrections are given as change releases in the web service.

Data revision - policy

Revisions – i.e. improvements in the accuracy of statistical data already published – are a normal feature of statistical production and result in improved quality of statistics. The principle is that statistical data are based on the best available data and information concerning the statistical phenomenon. On the other hand, the revisions are communicated as transparently as possible in advance. Advance communication ensures that the users can prepare for the data revisions.

The reason why data in statistical releases become revised is often caused by the data becoming supplemented. Then the new, revised statistical figure is based on a wider information basis and describes the phenomenon more accurately than before.

Revisions of statistical data may also be caused by the calculation method used, such as annual benchmarking or updating of weight structures. Changes of base years and used classifications may also cause revisions to data.

Quality assessment

When evaluating the reliability of the statistics it should be noted that possible structural changes in the data may have an effect on the end result. In addition, not all the data of the Population Information System and the register of housing allowances are necessarily fully up-to-date.

The register of housing allowances provides information about rents in dwellings of those receiving housing allowance. The register covers all dwellings receiving housing allowance. The timeliness of housing allowance data does not fully correspond with the reference period of the statistics, because the register data are updated during the preceding 12 or 24 months. The housing allowance data have the nature of a sample because they only include rental dwellings receiving housing allowance, and do not structurally necessarily fully correspond with the structure of the entire rental dwelling stock.

The data of rental housing companies describe the whole rental dwelling stock for the participating companies. In the statistics, company data represent all observations based on rental housing companies. The rent index is formed for all rental dwellings included in the index calculation of the data, and there is no separate index for new tenancy agreements like for average rents. New tenancies are included in the index calculation when a pair for them is found in the base period, in practice in the first quarter of the following year. A new tenancy is included in the calculation as soon as the tenants change if the same dwelling was included in the base period, that is, both the old and the new tenants are found in the Social Security Institution's register of housing allowances.

To ensure the reliability of the statistics, data are not published in categories with under 20 observations. The statistics make use of limits on rent per square metre based on the distribution, by which cases clearly deviating from the market level and errors in data are removed.

Quality assurance

Quality management requires comprehensive guidance of activities. The quality management framework of the field of statistics is the European Statistics Code of Practice (CoP). The frameworks complement each other. The quality criteria of Official Statistics of Finland are also compatible with the European Statistics Code of Practice. 

Further information: Quality management | Statistics Finland (stat.fi) 

User access

Data are released to all users at the same time. Statistical data may only be handled at Statistics Finland and information on them may be given before release only by persons involved in the production of the statistics concerned or who need the data of the statistics concerned in their own work before the data are published. 

Further information: Publication principles for statistics 

Unless otherwise separately stated in connection with the product, data or service concerned, Statistics Finland is the producer of the data and the owner of the copyright. The terms of use for statistical data. 

Statistical experts

Service email
asuminen.hinnat@stat.fi
Martti Korhonen
Senior Statistician
029 551 3451