Annual report 2024

Selvaag Bolig ASA is a residential development company that manages the entire value chain from acquisition of land to completed residential and urban areas. The company represents a continuation of Selvaag's more than 75-year history and experience and has several thousand homes under development in growth areas in and around the largest cities in Norway and Sweden. Selvaag Bolig offers a broad variety of housing types, including the lifestyle concept Selvaag Pluss®, which features homes with shared spaces and services.

Our vision: We make cities better.

Selvaag Bolig is a safe and secure partner for our customers’ most important investment. Our customers say that choosing us is choosing expertise, seriousness and high ambitions.

We like to call ourselves housing specialists – building over 60 000 homes does something to you.

Since the very beginning, Selvaag and all of us who work in Selvaag Bolig have loved smart solutions. We have challenged the authorities and the industry itself about what is possible to build, and we continue to do so. Every day we are working to develop homes, neighbourhoods and solutions that simplify people's lives. We make sure that long-lasting and sensible projects are built in areas where they are needed, in growing cities. That is sustainability in action.

No project is too big or too complex for us. At Løren in Oslo, we transformed a shuttered military camp to become an entire new neighbourhood. At Kaldnes in Tønsberg, a dead industrial zone got a new life as a new and vibrant residential area. At Fornebu, a new city will emerge where an airport once stood. When we create the cities of the future, it is our task to ensure that people’s homes and neighbourhoods create a secure setting for a good life. Our long history as the homebuilder for the people gives us a responsibility. We build housing that is highly needed, at a price most people can afford.

Everything we do is carefully contemplated, down to the smallest details.

The entire new home industry has experienced falling profitability and lower order backlogs in recent years, and at the end of 2024 home construction in Norway was at the lowest level since 1946. Selvaag Bolig has, however, done well during the tough times and is now preparing for growth.

In a market characterised by higher costs, lower purchasing power and poor framework conditions for housing investments, we have delivered positive results, managed to avoid losing key competence and succeeded in starting construction on new, profitable projects. Several successful sales and construction starts enabled us to increase the number of homes under construction during the year and we ended the year with 829 units under construction with a combined sales value of NOK 6.1 billion.

Trend shift in the housing market?
There are several indications that the downturn is over. In 2024 we sold 230 more units with a value that was NOK 1.8 billion higher than in 2023. And sales in the fourth quarter of 2024 alone were twice as good as the same period of 2023. Better sales have allowed us to successfully increase the number of units under construction significantly. We now have a solid order backlog which we are planning to increase further going forward. We have good reasons to be optimistic now that the equity requirements in the Norwegian Mortgage Lending Regulations have been eased, and interest rate cuts and wage growth have been predicted. At the same time, we know that housing needs are high because of low home construction over time. The coming years could therefore give good sales and increased activity. We are ready to meet this with over 400 units for sales in solid projects in the right locations, and are planning sales launches for several of our major new projects in the years ahead.

During the year we reached agreements for new land plots for 880 units in Greater Oslo, Bergen and Stockholm. We believe that there are opportunities to purchase good land plots now, and we are working on further investments. That will strengthen our already solid land bank and give us more projects going forward. Our focus, when the housing normalises in both Norway and Sweden, will be to raise our production volumes. We have both the key personnel, land bank, financial muscles and the products needed to achieve this.

New forms of housing are increasingly important
One of the reasons that Selvaag Bolig has managed well through downturns is that we have products that stand out from the rest of the market, especially the lifestyle concept Selvaag Pluss. Demand for Selvaag Pluss is high, a concept of homes with access to exclusive, staffed common areas and service offerings, and such offerings make up a rising share of our portfolio. Our experience is that the concept meets the municipalities’ wishes for housing projects which cover many more interests and needs than before, including stricter requirements for climate and the environment, social housing models and living forms that facilitate a simpler life for people of all ages and life situations. In addition, the concept fills home buyers wish for homes that are more than four walls and a roof, facilitating a simpler and more inclusive everyday life.

Both customer satisfaction surveys and evaluations of the concept confirm that residents in Selvaag Pluss are more satisfied than residents of standard housing projects. They experience better quality of life, reduced loneliness, and older residents are able to stay longer in their own homes. So far, we have built and developed more than 2 000 homes across 15 projects since 2004, and Selvaag Pluss will be an important and growing part of our offering going forward. Interest in the concept is increasing from both home buyers and municipalities. Thus Selvaag Pluss is steadily becoming a larger part of our product offering. We now have about 3 000 such homes under development within our new projects. At the same time, we are continuously refining the concept, both when it comes to the service offering and for the flats themselves, making it accessible to more people, both in existing and new development areas. An example of this is the compact flat concept Selvaag City, which is based on Selvaag Pluss, but has more small flats with lower unit prices, and Selvaag Nabolag (Neighbourhood) which offers staffed meeting places, arrangements and services to entire housing areas.

Increased environmental efforts
Our other ESG efforts continued unabated in 2024. We are working with a full focus on reducing negative impacts on climate and the environment, and contributing in a positive manner whenever possible. In addition, we are strengthening our efforts to ensure good social conditions in our entire value chain. One prerequisite to achieve this is that we have good routines, management systems and access to correct data. We have a solid basis in data in all our projects and we have defined our level of ambition when it comes to reducing carbon emissions and climate risk.

We conduct a carbon footprint assessment for all our projects, and check that all our large suppliers have decent working conditions and human rights. As part of our ESG work we have changed our routines and require our entire supplier chain to meet requirements regarding both climate impact and human rights. The sustainability information in this annual report follows the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and follows the same principles as the 2023 annual report.

Co-ownership is profitable
At the same time as a home purchase from Selvaag Bolig is a safe and good investment, another important parameter for success is that we have satisfied customers and engaged employees. We are thus very pleased to see that this year’s customer satisfaction survey showed high satisfaction and that our employees greatly enjoy their jobs. Selvaag Bolig made it through the year without significant staffing changes, and the year’s employee satisfaction survey “Great Place to Work” showed that Selvaag Bolig is still one of Norway’s best workplaces.

In addition to a strong professional and social environment and competitive salary conditions, I believe that co-ownership contributes to having employees who go the extra mile. We have share programmes which stimulate to broad and long-term ownership, and give all the employees the opportunity to participate directly in the company’s value creation. Around 60 per cent of us are now shareholders in Selvaag Bolig and at the end of 2024 we own shares valued at nearly NOK 109 million in total. So far that has been not only profitable for the participating colleagues, but has without a doubt also strengthened engagement and loyalty. I believe that a company that is both competent and profitable, with satisfied colleagues, will deliver good returns in both good and difficult times. In 2023 and 2024, which both were challenging years, shareholder returns (Total Swap Return) were 12.6% and 12.0%, respectively, which we are very satisfied with in today’s market. Long-term ownership in Selvaag Bolig has been profitable.

Our goal is that it should be profitable to work for us, to invest in our company and to be a homeowner in a Selvaag Bolig property. All signs indicate that we will achieve that going forward.