House inventory for increased occupancy

An increased demand for houses in the country is matched with empty desolate houses with potential. The result is expected to lead to increased occupancy and new life in many nice old houses.

In the project Grow together, the municipalities of Luleå and Boden meet to take an inventory of uninhabited houses with the potential to be sold or rented out. The feasibility study scans the range and has been received very positively by both owners and buyers.

“Grow together” is a feasibility study owned by the municipalities of Luleå and Boden and carried out by RÅEK in Gunnarsbyn together with the citizens’ office in Råneå. The entire area from Råneå to Gunnarsbyn and Vitådalen is inventoried on both sides of the municipal border.

The background is an increased demand for housing outside urban areas, more than there have been houses for today, in combination with the need for increased occupancy. This at the same time as there are many uninhabited houses that risk being destroyed by time, but which with a little love could get new life both in the house and in the villages.

– Our job is to take an inventory and see which houses are uninhabited. The inventory is still ongoing with the goal of being completed by the summer, says Jenny Engström, who is RÅEK’s representative in the project.

She collaborates with colleague Marja Leena Tallus at the Citizens’ Office in Råneå. Together they have found many fine pearls already.

– So far, we have identified a number of houses, everything from cold-laid desolate houses and renovation objects to ready-to-move-in, says Marja Leena Tallus.

When the inventory is completed, the idea is to further develop the agency so that homeowners and interested buyers can more easily find the objects and each other. The model will hopefully be useful in times when Norrbotten is calling for labor and the trend shows that more and more people want to live in rural areas close to urban areas. After a TV feature about the project, email and phone calls went hot from interested parties, which bodes well for further development of the idea.