Danish delight

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Surveys of the world’s most liveable cities invariably place Copenhagen close to the top of the list. Monocle magazine’s most liveable cities index ranked the Danish capital third this year behind Helsinki and Zurich, down from second place in 2010.

This comes as little surprise to Frank Theakston, a British editor who arrived in Copenhagen in 1979 for a post at the World Health Organisation and never left. “It’s a compact place, the size of a provincial city in England, but it has the amenities of a capital. I live in the suburbs but I can get to the centre in 15 minutes,” he says.

Copenhagen boasts high employment, superb childcare facilities and top-class education and health systems. So it is surprising that, UN workers and diplomats aside, more international types are not buying homes. The city of approximately 1.2m is split between upscale districts such as Osterbro and Frederiksberg (plus edgier Norrebro) in the city proper, and well-ordered suburbs on its fringe. On top of that, property is “relatively cheap”, according to Alexander Koch de Gooreynd of Knight Frank.

A misunderstanding of the rules might be part of the reason. A clause in the EU’s Maastricht treaty allows Denmark to restrict the sale of holiday homes to Danes and foreigners with a permanent home in the country. But any EU citizen can buy, for instance, an apartment in Copenhagen in much the same way as they can buy one in London or Paris (the rules for non-EU citizens are more complicated).

Danish Homes, a local estate agency, has a 227 sq m apartment in an ornate, listed block in Osterbro for DKr5.995m (£692,000). The property has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, separate reception and dining rooms and a sea view. The cost per sq m is a little over £3,000 for a residence in a district that is home to most of the city’s embassies – a kind of Danish South Kensington. The unit is also available for rent for DKr25,000 (£2,890) per month. Meanwhile an immaculate detached four-bedroom family home in Hellerup, a desirable suburb within easy reach of international schools offering tuition in English, is available through the same agency for DKr7.995m (£923,000).

Denmark was hit quite hard by the global property crash. “Overall in Denmark prices have dropped by around 15 per cent since the peak of the market,” says Danish Homes founder Peter Sander, “although the best apartments in the capital fell by much less.” Research from Knight Frank International shows that Danish residential prices dropped by 0.5 per cent in the past year – the same as the UK. “With the market as it is, many people don’t want to sell,” says Sander. “Sometimes they cannot get their asking price.”

Sander’s agency maintains one of the few property websites that can be navigated in English. Others, such as www.home.dk, offer a wealth of listings and buyers’ guides, but all in Danish. However, you don’t have to read the local language to spot a key difference between Danish residential listings and their equivalents in the UK: in Denmark, interiors count for much more than exteriors.

According to Susanne Sondahl Wolff, business development officer of the Danish Design Centre, Danes invest more money in furnishings because of the long, dark winters. It is part of hygge, sometimes translated as “cosiness”: “We like to create beautiful homes that are a pleasure to have to stay in,” she says. “Our taste tends to be quite minimalistic; we like wood and appreciate fine craftsmanship.”

In the years after the second world war Danish designer Arne Jacobsen and others brought well conceived and well crafted furniture and household objects, including cutlery and tableware, to the masses. Danes fell especially in love with Jacobsen’s signature curvy chairs and they are still cherished. You can see examples of the “Swan” and the “Egg” chairs at the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel Copenhagen, which was designed by Jacobsen.

English is widely and fluently spoken and there is a strong innovative streak. The city’s streets, air and harbour water are clean and you can get everywhere by bike; indeed, half of all Copenhageners now cycle to work according to the city council.

Twenty years ago you might have complained about the food. “People didn’t go to restaurants unless it was a special occasion,” says Theakston. “But at the beginning of the 1990s a café culture began to spring up, and then came the new restaurants.”

Young professionals have snapped up units in converted industrial and naval buildings on the island of Christianshavn, facing the city centre across the harbour. A concentration of bars and restaurants here includes chef René Redzepi’s much-fêted Noma, housed in a former warehouse and known for reinventing Danish cuisine with recipes based on seasonal produce. But Noma is now just one of a number of inventive, high-end eateries within cycling distance (or a metro ride) of downtown Copenhagen.

Further south, part of the flatlands between the city and its international airport is being filled by Orestad, a master-planned community that, rather than functioning as a traditional suburb, brings housing, retail and workspaces together, juxtaposing extensive green spaces with modest homes and dense blocks of flats. Set among all this are landmark structures such as the glowing blue cube of Jean Nouvel’s Copenhagen Concert Hall, which opened in 2009.

Orestad’s quirky, semi-urban vibe hasn’t entirely caught on. In hindsight, too much here was built too soon and the development is probably Copenhagen’s most visible victim of the housing crash. However, that hasn’t stopped Copenhagen from laying plans for another new community at Nordhavn, on 200 acres of land adjacent to Osterbro, surrounded on three sides by sea. Around 2,000 homes are being built here in Nordhavn’s first phase and it is hoped that the new district will house 40,000 people and provide around the same number of jobs. The supply of residential real estate in Copenhagen is not likely to run dry any time soon.

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Buying guide

Pros

● Relatively low property prices

● Great restaurant and bar scene

● International airport close to the city centre

Cons

● Cool, damp climate (although summers are often glorious)

● Owning a car is costly and public parking is limited

● High utility bills

What you can buy for ...

£100,000 A one-bedroom flat needing renovation in the up-and-coming district of Norrebro near the city centre

£1m A comfortable five-bedroom detached house in Copenhagen’s affluent northern suburbs

Contacts

● Danish Homes www.danishhomes.com

● Home.dk www.home.dk

● Danish Design Centre www.ddc.dk

Nick Foster was a guest of the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel Copenhagen, www.radissonblu.com