Colliers Denmark Market Report 2025

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RESIDENTIAL - COLLIERS MARKET REPORT 2025

Demographic changes create new housing needs Demographic changes play a key role in the residential market, as changes in population composition affect the demand for different housing types. In recent years, two demographic trends have been particularly prominent and have significantly affected housing demand: An ageing population: The proportion of senior citizens is on the rise, creating increased demand for smaller, practical dwellings. More singles: The increasing number of single adults, both young and old, increases the need for affordable housing of suitable sizes. How are these trends reflected in household sizes over time, and have they led to a mismatch between the existing housing stock and demand in today’s market? Household size trends can be attributed to multiple factors, includ ing changing life patterns, with more people choosing to live alone for longer periods of their lives, following e.g. divorce, and an increasing number of older people living alone after the death of a partner. When analysing the past decade’s development in household size, we see a significant increase in the number of households with one or two people. Nationally, the number of single-person households has grown by 13%, while two-person households have increased by 7% over the same period. In com parison, households with three or four people have only seen 4% growth, while households with five or more people have seen a decline of 1%. In the larg est municipalities of Denmark, we generally see the same trend – the number of one and two-person households has seen the largest percentage growth, with the growth in single-person households clearly most pronounced. Not surprisingly, the City of Copenhagen is an exception. Here, it can be assumed that e.g. the requirement that a proportion of newly built homes must be of a