Rental apartments increase in number and Lumo expands the housing service range

Housing services and enhancing the service experience are today's watchwords. Trouble-free, easy and effortless living rise to the fore when rental accommodation is evaluated – as well as an increasing desire for extra services. In order to strengthen our message about our versatile offering, we have brought a new rental housing brand to the market this autumn. Alongside VVO, we now have Lumo.

Lumo is a market-led rental concept that offers next-generation services for rental housing and gives tenants even greater freedom of choice. Tenants make their apartment their home, and we make everything else as effortless as possible. VVO-brand apartments are state-subsidised developments, and are therefore cost principle rentals.

We have maintained our good profit performance. The future of the rental business looks bright in spite of developments in the surrounding world. A total of 964 apartments were under construction at the end of the review period, all of which are privately financed.

Our goal is to continue with our considerable investments and expand our housing offering in Finland's growth centres. We currently own 40,668 rental apartments. By the end of 2018, this figure will grow to 45,000 in 35 municipalities in Finland.

During the review period, we announced an agreement with Rakennusosakeyhtiö Hartela for the development of rental apartments in Helsinki, Espoo, Tuusula and Lahti worth a total of EUR 112 million. As part of this agreement, a total of over 500 apartments will be built in 2014–2018.

We have created a completely new way of working and a brand-new type of agreement structure, which we also intend to harness in our future new investments. The agreement with Hartela primarily consists of rental housing projects in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, where there is a particular need for suitably sized rental apartments near services and good public transportation connections.

Our strategic objective is to be the number-one choice for rental housing. Growing our rental stock and an excellent customer experience will play a key role in this. A good customer experience is generated by a versatile range of housing solutions, easy and effortless dealings with us, and user-friendly online services.

Our tenants have been eager to complete their rental agreements online from start to finish. Over 60 per cent of our tenants have signed an online rental agreement. The use of e-signatures has increased steadily throughout the country.

According to our latest annual customer satisfaction survey, our tenants are satisfied: 92 per cent of our tenants have already recommended, or would be ready to recommend, VVO as a landlord.

Thank you for this period and have a great autumn!

Jani Nieminen
CEO