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1. Buying your own home – the financially smart choice

Buying your own home is usually financially sensible, as your loan repayments build your personal wealth. When you live in your own home, you are essentially paying rent to yourself instead of a landlord. Additionally, you may benefit from a possible increase in the value of the home.

Buying your first home often becomes relevant when you have a regular income and have saved the required self-financing share.

Read about the benefits of home ownership compared to renting.

2. Did you know that now is an excellent time to buy your first home?

Purchasing your first home is more affordable than it was in recent years, and there is a wide selection of small apartments available. Home prices fell due to the rise in interest rates that took place from 2022 to 2024.

Interest rates have now stabilised at a reasonable level of about 2%, and the cost of home ownership relative to income has decreased. 

Read about the situation in the housing market in our housing market review for autumn 2025.

3. Find out how big a home loan you can get

The amount of the home loan you can get is determined by your monthly income and expenses, savings and other assets that you can put up as collateral.

You can’t buy a home with just a loan. As a first-time home buyer, you must have savings (in other words, a self-financing share) equivalent to 5% of the price of the home, or a corresponding amount of other collateral. 

If you are taking out an ASP loan, your self-financing share must be at least 10%.

Read more about the self-financing share of home loans

4. Apply for a home loan online

  1. Use our calculator to find out how big a home loan you can get and fill in the application.
  2. Fill in the application. It doesn’t cost you anything to apply for a home loan, and you have no obligation to take out a loan from us. 
  3. Send an application. Once we have received it, we will contact you with an invitation to a loan negotiation.

5. We will carefully assess whether you can afford to repay your loan

In the loan negotiation, we will review your application and check with you that you have enough money every month to cover your living expenses and your loan repayments. Usually we recommend that living expenses amount to no more than 40% of your net income (income after tax). 

We also calculate how your total loan costs would change if the loan interest rises to 6%. This is called a loan stress test. 

FlexiPayment allows you to postpone your loan payments 

Our home loan is the only one on the market that comes with a feature that allows you to postpone loan payments independently. This means that, if your finances are tight, you can decide if you only want to pay interest and expenses for the current month. This FlexiPayment feature usually covers about 10% of the loan amount. 

Read more about FlexiPayment

6. First-time home buyer’s benefits

You need less savings for a home purchase – that is, a smaller self-financing share (5%) than other home buyers – when you buy your first home with a regular loan.

However, if you have saved in an ASP account and buy a home with an ASP loan, your savings have to amount to 10%. On the other hand, the ASP loan has many other benefits, including:

  • an annual 1% tax-free deposit interest on ASP savings, plus an additional 4% interest when you meet the ASP saving requirements
  • free interest subsidy for the first 10 years
  • free government guarantee for the ASP loan.

Read more about the benefits of an ASP loan.

Frequently asked questions buying your first home

Home loan basics – learn the vocabulary

If you’re planning to buy your first home, you might come across various issues and concepts that you’d like to know more about.

Learn the vocabulary of home loans

Need help?

Personal customers