Survey

People in Finland would like to spend more time with their neighbours - solution could be offered by future digital services

According to a survey conducted this summer, people in Finland would like to share items and spaces with their neighbours but also to spend time with them in contexts such as communal barbecues. In the future, this could be enabled by digital services. Digital services are still something relatively new in the housing sector, but in the future they could offer a solution not only for everyday matters such as rent payments but also for people's desire for communality. The rental housing provider SATO, which commissioned the survey, is responding to the growing demand for digital services by launching the OmaSATO service developed in cooperation with residents.

The SATO survey conducted this summer explored the wishes and needs related to the home and housing services of a thousand people over the age of 18 in Finland.

According to the results, the most natural way of spending time with neighbours among residents of apartment buildings and terraced homes is taking part in traditional communal work gatherings (55%), but more than one in three (35%) would also like to join other events such as barbecues. One in four of the youngest, i.e. those aged 18-24 (24 %), and the oldest, i.e. those aged 65 or over (23%), hoped to meet their neighbours more thanks to shared, communal areas.

"The traditional conception is that Finns are not very outgoing, so these results can be regarded as quite surprising. This is an important finding as regards the development of urban housing, and digital solutions play a significant enabling role in this. Our customers can already use our OmaSATO service to take care of practicalities relating to their home, and we'll be developing it further into a more and more diverse channel," says SATO Director of Marketing and Communications Miia Eloranta.

Demand for digital services

The survey shows that there is a demand for digital housing services. According to Finnish interviewees the most important housing-related matter taken care of fully digitally is paying the rent or the charge for common expenses (67% of respondents). More than one in four (26%) of respondents communicate digitally with the building manager and a little under one in four (23%) with the maintenance company. One in three (33%) respondents would use more of all kinds of housing-related services if they could be ordered from the same place in a centralised manner.