Following the record year of 2020, sales of new residences continued to remain high. With few residences left to sell, we concentrated on acquiring building plots and initiating new construction projects.

Our property management portfolio gave a great return. Our rental business carried on as usual, and once again we received great customer satisfaction results. We continued our renovation projects, with the one located in Västerås, Sweden, being our biggest so far.

With growth in focus

Although competition for both existing real estate and land to build on is high, we purchased over 1,500 building rights in Sweden and Denmark, in line with our growth strategy.

“In Denmark, we made our our largest investment ever when purchasing former competitor Bonava’s portfolio of building plots around the Copenhagen area in connection with their withdrawal from the Danish market. The portfolio consists of 520 building rights for tenant-owned row houses and apartments as well as rental apartments, which means we now expands Ikano Bolig’s product offer to include rental apartments!” says Robert Jaaniste, CEO of Ikano Bostad.

“Also in Sweden, we started to build a larger share of rental apartments which we will keep in our property management portfolio. This way, we combine and make use of our two business areas while offering housing for the many people,” Robert continues.

Exploring wider suburban areas

Urbanisation in Sweden and Denmark continues, but it is changing. Less people are interested in moving to city centres, while suburban areas with developed public transportation are growing fast.

In Denmark, there is a city planning model called “The Five Finger Plan” for the region surrounding Copenhagen. By ensuring housing, motorways and railways along the “fingers” leading into the palm of the hand, the capital, the space between is to be left untouched as protected land, fields and forests – allowing nature to be at the doorstep of the inhabitants while giving them easy access to transportation.

Add to this, the fact that housing prices are lower make these areas attractive. Therefore, we decided to continue prioritising these areas, but also expand our focus to the wider suburban areas, when we look for new business opportunities.

Strong focus on sustainability

After having set a clear goal to become climate neutral by 2030 and having developed a road map accordingly in 2020, our sustainability journey continued in 2021. We joined various sustainability forums in Sweden to work together within the construction industry to progress. This type of cooperation made it possible for us to rapidly implement climate calculations in all new construction projects during the year.

2021 was also the year we started the construction of our first house certified with the Nordic Swan Ecolabel, and started our first construction using “green concrete” which has a 42% lower climate impact. Furthermore, we started planning for our first climate-neutral townhouses, which we will start building in 2022.

Other milestones on our road of development

During the year we built our first wooden apartment building in Stockholm. Also, we started developing a new type of co-living apartment and a mobility house in Malmö. We finalised our first self-developed nursing home. Furthermore, we made an in-dept analysis of our customer journey. All this, while continuing our digitalisation journey with new systems and a data-driven approach.

In Demark, we successfully increased the awareness of our Ikano Bolig brand with a commercial campaign. We also finalised our first community house “Nærvær” in Greve, outside of Copenhagen, in line with our objective to take care of the neighbourhoods where we build.