If you’ve ever been looking for a place to stay in the Greater Copenhagen area (Storkøbenhavn), you probably know that the struggle is real. With limited supply and high pricing, finding an accommodation can be a challenging task. Prompted by my personal curiousity on the subject, I decided to look into the data to figure out what is generally available for rent, how much it costs as well as which factors influence the price. In this article, I would like to share some of my findings with you, though I encourage you to download my free infographic to get all insights.

What’s available on the market?

This analysis is based on advertisements scapred from the Danish website www.boligportal.dk, where landlords post about accommodations they have available for rent. These can range from single rooms to apartments and houses.

As of 21 February 2023, there were just over 3,000 rentals listed in the Greater Copenhagen area (Storkøbenhavn in Danish). The vast majority of these were apartments (82%) and single rooms (12%). Rooms were mostly located in the city (⅔ of all rooms), while houses were mostly located in the suburbs (92% of all houses).

Other things worth noting include:

• Overall, 73% of all accommodations are available for rent for an unlimited time period.
• When it comes to size, regular houses are the rental type with the largest median area (153 m²), followed by semi-detached houses (120 m²) and apartments (87 m²).
• If we measure size by the median number of rooms instead, the conclusion is pretty similar, with houses leading (5 rooms), followed by semi-detached (4 rooms) and apartments (3 rooms).
• Apartments are the type of accommodation most likely to be associate with an unlimited lease duration, while houses are least likely to be available for an unlimited time period, as the chart below shows:

Not sure what’s reasonable to pay for rent?

Looking at the price of rent per square meter, we see that for the vast majority of accommodations, you’d be expected to pay between 150-200 kr. per m². That being said, in some cases the price can be as low as 67 kr. per m² or as high as 894 kr. per m². In 75% of all cases, you can furthermore expect to pay below 13.22 kr. per m² in relation to the monthly fixed acconto payment.

Please note that rent prices differ based on both geographical location and the type of accommodation, as can be seen on the chart below:

Wonder how to save money on rent?

You can use several strategies here. You can either go for a smaller place (if you want to save in absolute terms) or a bigger place (if you want to save in relative terms, given that the price of rent per m² decreases with size). You can also choose a less central location, for example, by opting not to live in Copenhagen or Frederiksberg, you can save 53 kr. per m² on average.

Want to live alone?

If you are single or you just want to live by yourself, then you might be better off by renting a one-room apartment (e.g. a studio) rather than going for a single room in a shared accommodation. Based on median price, one-room apartments are 43% cheaper than single rooms. In fact, if we look at the bottom 75% of all one-room apartments, prices will not exceed 245 kr. per square meter, whereas if we look at the bottom 75% of all single rooms, the price per square meter can be as high as 463 kr. (a difference of 89%).

These are insights from my latest spare time project, where I looked into data on 3,000+ privately rented accommodations from the Danish website BoligPortal. You can read more about the project in the linked free infographic and go in-depth with the analysis on my GitHub page.

Disclaimer

Please note that the conclusions and recommendations presented below are as of February 2023. While I expect these to remain more or less stable due to the structural character of the rental market, some changes may occur.

📊📖 Download the free infographic with all the insights here.

🔎📈 Explore the analysis on the project’s GitHub page.

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Cover image source: Own production