Buying a Home in Denmark in 2025

I’ve recently been through the confusing process of buying a home in Denmark, and I found the entire process very poorly documented, and when I did find a decent guide to the process it was often very biased, as it was written by a real estate agent or lawyer. This post is thus an attempt at such a guide, but from the perspective of a home buyer. I will try to be as neutral as possible, but I am of course no expert, so some bits might not be applicable to you or your situation. Let’s go.

# Step 1: Talk to your bank

I did this step way too late, and you can save yourself a lot of unnecessary stress by setting up a meeting with your bank first thing. The point of this meeting is to get an idea of how much you can borrow, which also helps you narrow down your home search. Prior to this meeting, the bank will ask for a tonne of documents from you to assess your financial situation properly, so be prepared for this.

During your meeting with the bank you can have them calculate different scenarios for different price points, which is quite useful to keep in mind when you start looking at homes. Some people I know also had meetings with multiple banks to compare their offers, but I didn’t do this as I had just changed banks and could not be bothered to do this again.

# Step 2: Find a buyer’s agent

A buyer’s agent (Danish: køberrådgiver) is a person who can help you with several aspects of the home buying process. This includes assessing the value of the home you’ve found, negotiating the price, and looking through the contract and all the associated paper work, to see if everything is in order (these different tasks are usually performed by different people). A buyer’s agent is not required, but supposedly quite common. I had a buyer’s agent to look through all the paperwork as the only thing I wanted help with, as you tend to get bombarded with 10-20 different documents on top of your contract, so it’s nice to have someone who knows what to look for, and that you can ask questions to. They usually offer a “bought-or-free” service, which means that you don’t have to pay them anything if you don’t end up buying a home.

I used Købersmægler for this service and had to pay a 10,000 kr. fee for the “bought-or-free” documentation check service by one of their lawyers. I did not really shop around for other buyer’s agents, so I don’t know if this is a good price or not. If you’re interested in using a buyer’s agent then it’s great to find one before you start looking for a home, as the home buying process can be quite rapid, so having one already will alleviate the stress of looking for one while you have an estate agent breathing down your neck.

# Step 3: Decide on a budget

With the scenarios from your bank in mind, you now want to decide on which price range you are looking for. There are two main price values to keep in mind when looking at homes: the price itself and the “owner fee” (Danish: ejerudgift), which is the total amount of fees you have to spend the first year after buying the home. This includes various building insurances, property taxes, the fee to the homeowners association (Danish: ejerforening), and potential loans associated with the flat from building repairs or the like. A low house price can sometimes be offset by a high owner fee, so keep this in mind when looking at homes.

Aside from knowing what price point and owner’s fee you are going for, there are several one-time fees you also need to keep in mind. The main one is the land registration fee (Danish: tinglysningsafgift), which is a fee you have to pay the state to register the home in your name. This fee is 0.6% of the purchase price plus an additional flat fee of 1,850 kr., which can be quite substantial. The other major one-time fee is the buyer’s agent fee, if you are using one.

Side note: If you have your down payment money in stocks or other investments, you might want to consider selling them before you start looking for a home, to avoid having to stress about the stock market when you suddenly need the money within a few days.

# Step 4: Find a home

Now you know how much you can borrow, and you have a buyer’s agent to help you with the home buying process, so now it’s time to find a home. The main website for this is Boligsiden. This is the fun bit! Shop around, sign up for viewings and open houses, and go check out a bunch of different ones. I made a little tool I used to send me an email whenever a new home was listed that matched my search criteria, which you can use if you want - it’s called BoligPing and is free and open source. Boligsiden also has their own email alert system, but I just found it to miss some flats and be quite slow to send out emails.

When you’re viewing homes, estate agents will try to inflate the interest as much as possible to make you think that the home is in high demand and thus buy faster. This includes pooling viewings together (I had one with 30+ people at the same time), and mentioning that other buyers are close to signing a contract. This is all part of the game, so don’t let it stress you out too much. If you are interested in a particular home, however, you do need to act quickly sometimes, as the attractive ones are often sold within a week or two.

# Step 5: Make an offer

Once you’ve found a home you like, it’s time to make an offer. If your buyer’s agent is helping you with this, they will usually do this for you. If not, you can just text or email the estate agent with your offer, which is almost always a bit below the asking price.

I encountered two different types of “bidding tactics” when making offers. The first one is the relaxed one, where you make an offer informally, the estate agent will speak to the seller, get back to you with a counter offer, and so on, until you reach an agreement. The other one is the “serious offers only” tactic, where the estate agent wants you to sign the contract with your offer, and then they will present it together with the other offers to the seller. The seller will then sign the contract with the best offer, after which the deal is done. This is a bit more stressful, as you have to make a decision on the spot, and you can’t just back out of the deal. My bank told me that this strategy is getting more and more common, so be prepared for it!

When both you and the seller have signed the contract, you can only back out of the deal in three different ways:

1. If the contract contains a “bank reservation” (Danish: bankforbehold) then you can back out of the deal if your bank does not approve the loan. This has to be done before the bank reservation period ends, which is usually 3-6 weekdays after both the buyer and seller have signed the contract.If the bank cancels the loan, there are no repercussions for you, and you can just walk away from the deal. Your contract should always contain this clause, so make sure to check this before signing.
2. If the contract contains a “lawyer reservation” (Danish: advokatforbehold) then you can back out of the deal if your buyer’s agent does not approve the contract (they will speak to you about this before approving/declining). If your buyer’s agent cancels the contract, you can also walk away from the deal without any repercussions. Your contract should always contain this clause, so make sure to check this before signing.
3. If you just end up changing your mind about the home, you can still back out of the deal without it being grounded in finances (bank reservation) or the contract (lawyer reservation). Note however that in this case you have to pay a fee to the seller of 1% of the purchase price, which is quite a lot of money, so be sure to think this through before signing the contract.

# Step 6: Reservation period

Once both you and the seller have signed the contract, your bank and buyer’s agent will look through the contract and all the associated paperwork. They will have at most 6 weekdays to do this, but it can be as low as 2-3 weekdays, and will be stated in the contract itself. Make sure that you are available during this period, as you want to be able to have time to deal with potential issues that might arise.

During this period, the buyer’s agent might find issues with the contract or the paperwork, which might lead them to requiring the seller to change the contract after which both you and the seller have to sign it again. Of course, they will mention this to you before telling the seller, so you can choose to have them re-do the contract or just let it be. If the issues are serious, you can also tell the buyer’s agent to cancel the contract (assuming you have a lawyer reservation in the contract), and walk away from the deal.

When the period is over and both your bank and buyer’s agent are happy, the home is yours, congratulations! 🎉

# Step 7: Administrative tasks after buying a home

Now that you have bought a home, there are a few administrative tasks you need to take care of. The first one is to register the home in your name (Danish: tinglysning), which carries the fee that I mentioned above. Your buyer’s agent will usually sort this out for you if you have one, but if not you can do this yourself.

Another task is the reimbursement statement (Danish: refusionsopgørelse), which is a document stating how much the current owner has used in terms of electricity, water and heating, to ensure that you only pay for the amount that you will have used by the end of the year. Again, the buyer’s agent will usually sort this out for you, if you have one.

You also need to have another meeting with your bank to discuss the details about the loan. Of course they already know what your down payment is and that you can afford it, but there might be different kinds of loan options you can choose from. The simplest one is the fixed rate loan (Danish: fastforrentet lån), which has the same interest rate for the entire duration of the loan. The other ones are usually named something like “F1”, “F5” and the like, which means that the interest rate is fixed for 1, 5 or 10 years, after which it will be adjusted to the current market rate. The interest rates for these “F” loans are usually lower than the fixed rate loan, but you’ll only be allowed to get one if your finances can handle the potential fluctuations in the interest rate.