Holiday houses and holiday house areas within a 4-hour drive from the largest urban areas in Norway

This report, ‘Holiday houses and holiday house areas within a 4-hour drive from the largest urban areas in Norway’ presents a geographic analysis of holiday houses that are located within a 4-hour drive from Norway’s six most populated urban areas: Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger/Sandnes, Drammen and Fredrikstad/Sarpsborg.

The analysis serves as an up-to-date knowledge base for public administration, and is based on Statistics Norway’s official statistics on holiday house areas, published in 2017.

The driving time between urban areas and holiday homes has been calculated using GIS (Geographical Information Systems) and a network analysis. Separate statistics are presented for new holiday houses that were built between 2012 and 2016. An additional analysis has been carried out for the average utility floor space of holiday houses and whether this changes with distance from the urban areas.

A total of 360 000 holiday houses are reachable within a 4-hour drive from the six largest urban areas in Norway, which corresponds to about 80 per cent of all holiday houses in Norway as of 1 January 2017.

Fifty-six per cent of the holiday houses within a 4-hour drive from the six largest urban areas are located in a so-called densely built-up holiday house area. As a percentage of all holiday houses in Norway, the share in densely built-up holiday house areas is just 48 per cent.

When looking at the individual urban areas, Oslo and Drammen have the most holiday houses within a 4-hour drive. The population in these two urban areas can reach about half of all holiday houses in less than 4 hours. In Stavanger/Sandnes, Bergen and Trondheim, the population can only reach between 16 and 18 per cent of all holiday houses within 4 hours.

A total of 22 000 new holiday houses were built between 2012 and 2016, about 18 000 of which are within a 4-hour drive from the six largest urban areas. Most of the newbuild holiday houses are within a 1–3-hour drive of the six largest urban areas.

In terms of driving time from the individual urban areas, most of the new holiday houses can be reached in 4 hours from Drammen, Oslo and Fredrikstad/Sarpsborg. Of the newbuilds, 12 000 are located within a 4-hour drive of Drammen and Oslo, and 10 000 from Fredrikstad/Sarpsborg.

The largest holiday houses, with an average of 83 square metres, are found within a 2–3-hour drive from the six largest urban areas, and the smallest, with an average of 73 square metres, are located within a 1-hour drive. New holiday houses that were built between 2012 and 2016 are 101 square metres on average, making them considerably larger than other holiday houses in Norway. It is important to note that the average utility floor space is a measurement of the entire building, and not of the individual housing units such as flats or apartments.